The 9 dimensions of innovation for digital leaders
Innovation is at the core of business development – whatever stage of the business. With rapid developments in digital technology come more opportunities to adopt technology that will help organisations to experiment with innovation and explore different development frameworks.
Many of these opportunities stem particularly from developments in information and communication technologies and the growth of service-based economies.
With the vast range of options out there, though, comes the challenge of decided where to invest. I’ve heard from many business leaders who have fallen into the trap of investing resources and money into new technologies without having first assessed the strategic area that they will impact.
In this article, I’m going to look at the key areas of business innovation you need to be considering when you’re deciding on the priority areas for investment in new technology.
But first things first. Any organisation considering investing in digital technology to drive the business forward needs to ensure that their employees have the skills sets to match.
The most important element of any digital transformation programme is not the technology, but the people. A great team can lead to high performance, but just one individual can cause a project to fail. The need for digital skills in organisations is gaining traction – becoming front and centre as business technology use increases and customers become more reliant on digital interaction.
Poor digital skills hamper digital transformation programmes, damage the confidence of your staff and harm your organisation’s competitive advantage.
Although businesses are increasingly making investment in technology, in many cases this investment isn’t matched by investment in digital skills development in their people.
According to the European Commission in 2019, 88% of organisations have taken no measures to improve the digital skills among their employees.
As part of your planning for building a more innovative culture, consider whether your workforce needs to be upskilled first, and be aware of the realities of the investment needed to make that happen.
Your business strategy is the foundation of its future growth and sustainability. Many organisations are still basing their future on traditional, or even outdated, growth strategies.
New and emerging technologies support innovative growth and competitive positioning strategies, potentially offering you the opportunity to completely change your game plan, and become a real disrupter in your sector.
Similarly, could new technologies enable your business to innovate in the way that it generates income?
Could you adopt new forms of pricing (eg subscription services or retainer programmes)?
Are there new technologies which will enable you to implement more effective management control methods and models? Information management, knowledge protection and management are areas in which digital technologies (such as blockchain, for example) can streamline and improve business processes.
Access to improved technology presents the potential to share information as well as protect it, opening up opportunities for new strategic partnerships and alliances.
People in any organisation can put up resistance to change. It moves them out of their comfort zone, and may radically alter the way they work. Successful leaders of organisations aiming to escape the status quo have often used promoters (or champions) internally to support and shape the innovation process in order to bring people on board.
Top management needs to be fully on board in order to exert influence through power and persuasion.
But the larger and more complex the organisation, the more necessary it is to establish a project steering group as having a clear project owner. The group will encompass executive representatives of all the key areas of the business – such as production, finance, marketing and sales as well as IT.
