Are you making employee ideas float?

Business innovation is different from its technological counterpart. It is not reserved for the tech-guys, rather it can be promoted by managers throughout the organization. It entails bringing managers of various roles and business units to provide practical answers to some basic questions:

• What will make clients choose us?
• How can we better deliver on their expectations?
• What pulls us down financially, operationally, or strategically?
• Are we overlooking anything either internally or externally?

Managers across the organization are capable of answering such questions based on years of hands-on experience with clients and suppliers as well as with current business processes and challenges. But such answers are like oil; they rest deep down, unaware of their own existence. Such answers will not come to surface unless proactively searched for and pumped out, and that is precisely what effective business-innovation processes are designed to do. Moreover, such processes aim to add the “business-innovation chromosome” to the organizational DNA.

Why should we maintain effective business-innovation processes?

Many organizations overlook ever-changing business conditions along with their internal capability of addressing them. As a result, organizational decline sneaks in and affects many aspects of business operations and growth. When ignored or not treated effectively, organizational decline becomes a fatal disease. Effective business-innovation processes aim to prevent just that by encouraging organizations to proactively spot important changes and respond immediately. Such processes also provide managers with tools for mining raw observations that can be further examined and processed.

Corpocheck takes an active role in researching and designing effective business-innovation processes, and has developed managerial tools to support such processes – such as this pack of managerial cards. Such a mission is a challenging one, as each organization has its own unique characteristics, needs, and corporate culture. We are, however, aiming at discovering a generic formula that could help different types of organizations maintain their competitive position in the long run and avoid the well-known phenomenon of organizational decline.

Whatever your role is, I encourage you to mind the competitive position of the organization in the long run. If you have any idea that could help sustain it, do not hesitate to approach your direct manager to discuss it. At the same time, I encourage any organization to be mindful of its business-innovation process. It’s a specific business process as opposed to an abstract notion, and it is a vital one. This subject is being thoroughly researched as we speak. In that regard, please feel free write to me directly If you are willing to share the design of an effective business innovation process you already have in place or if you are trying to design one. Good luck!

If you got the cards, make sure to check the “How to select cards?” one to verify the suitability of this subject to your specific business circumstances. No professional advice is provided through this post or through Corpocheck’s pack of cards.