How to innovate when you don’t know “How”

In a market that moves faster every day, innovation could be considered as one of the most useful tools in management to achieve sustainability and continue delivering value. Improving your internal processes and continually enhancing your company’s offerings is the best way to achieve this. However, not everyone is successful when the time comes to apply innovation. 

A Mckinsey’s study on Innovation shows that although 84% of executives think innovation is important for their business growth strategy, only 6% are satisfied with the outcomes. Also, this report reveals that very few of them know what problem they are trying to solve or how to improve innovation and R&D.  So, how to make it right?

The innovation process is a path of transforming resources and knowledge into market solutions, and companies that have successfully achieved it have something in common. They have mastered the path from opportunity discovery to market launch. The formula to achieve this is made by established innovation processes and creative/innovative human talent. This equation allows putting together methodologies and the knowledge of the people involved, which as an outcome creates successful products or services. Nevertheless, results are not always satisfactory, in that case, every variable must be analyzed.

When it comes to methodologies, sometimes companies fail to identify which one suits the characteristics of their business or they fail to apply them correctly or quickly enough, so when the go-to-market comes, the impact does not go as expected. On the other hand, the fact that companies have innovation teams doesn’t mean they have innovative organisational cultures. Then, despite having people that promote innovation, outcomes do not always come as planned because they do not have the proper processes in place.

In both cases, a great alternative is Co-innovation. This means that bringing another player into the game, with the right knowledge and dynamism, would potentially increase the chances of success. Having access to the innovation capabilities and expertise of external collaborators offers many advantages both for companies that have innovation teams in their structure and for those that have not yet done so.

Among the main benefits of co-innovating are:

• Allows you to have a totally objective and independent perspective of your business and the market without bias.

• Allows you to have experts in innovation who have worked in different sectors that can bring good practices and knowledge to your business.

• Is the entry point to an innovation ecosystem where you can co-create and take advantage of the different stakeholders.

• More agile innovation processes that can respond to the market in a timely manner.

• Cost efficiency in case of not having an innovation team and the possibility of training the team in case of having one.

If you are part of the 94% who are not satisfied with the outcomes of innovation, we invite you to check our free training in opportunity discovery and to contact us so we can look together at your innovation process.

Opportunity Discovery Training: Detail Training-Opportunity Discovery