Why Business Innovations?

There’s a common saying in business: “Innovation is a relentless pursuit”. 

Innovation is a fire, lighting the desire to build new things, improve older ones, and overall make things better. For founders, business innovations not only means improving or reinventing internal processes and bringing a new innovative product to the market. Innovation means creating a new angle for problem solving. 

But why is innovation important in business?

Whether you’re pushing out an array of innovative products or improving existing procedures, pursuing business innovations is a great way to differentiate your company, stay competitive and relevant, and generally spice up your day-to-day operations. Outside of reinventing your business, innovating means finding new ways to solve problems. Michael Boyles said it best, “Business leaders must constantly look for new ways to innovate because you can't solve many problems with old solutions”.

Refining Your Innovation Approach

Innovation is two-pronged, with each path serving different purposes but ultimately leading to the betterment of your company and customers. The different forms of innovation are:

• Sustaining Innovation: Sustaining innovation refers to improvements made internally, such as tech revamps, process reorganizations and implementations, and even new customer services products. These innovations are aimed at enhancing the customer-facing product while improving customer experience. Internal innovations lead to higher external satisfaction.
• Disruptive Innovation: Disruptive innovation is probably the form of innovation that we’re most familiar with. This form of innovation sees companies creating new and innovative products to solve existing market problems. Depending on the company, disruption can mean one of two things: the company is entering an existing market and seeking to gain market share with a new product or the company is paving the road to a new market that they can’t currently reach.

Companies do a mixture of both to stay competitive and on top of their growth, often hiring business innovation advisors and other consultants to identify areas of improvement. 

The innovation process itself can be summarized in a couple of steps:

• Identifying: Start by identifying a problem within your current market that an innovation can solve. Problems are abundant, identifying the problems that resonate with your target consumer will be the catalyst for a great, disruptive product solution
• Ideation: Ideas just don’t grow on trees, generating a refined idea takes time and requires research that may go against the current tech zeitgeist
• Creation: Creating and developing your ideas is a hands-on process and requires time from development teams to full flesh out your vision
• Testing/Feedback: A solution might be great in your mind, but does it sit well with your target audience? Testing your solution and gathering impactful feedback can refine your innovation, as well as identify areas of growth for your next products
• Execution: Executing your innovation and bringing your product to market is the cherry on top of the innovation process, but also the scariest step. Will your audience adopt your product?

The process seems straightforward, however, there are a couple of considerations before starting.

Product Innovation Considerations

Innovation vs Creativity

The word “innovation” is thrown loosely around and can often be confused with creativity. While both are appreciated, the main difference is execution. Innovation requires execution and should be able to be replicated, allowing you to use the tools at your disposal again and again to create. Innovation also incurs a different type of risk that creativity blocks. Traversing uncharted territory and entering a new market with new technology isn’t for the faint of heart, time and resources put into innovating are second to none. It’s important to know whether your idea is truly an innovation, or a moment.

Trending Innovation

On the topic of product innovation itself, it’s important to consider whether you’re building something because you truly find it disruptive, or if it’s popular in our current tech zeitgeist. It’s tempting to build something because of the buzz around other product innovation examples, like AI. Countless companies have found their footing building AI/LLM solutions and generated great success. But for every successful company, there’s a dozen other companies building similar solutions that have fallen into obscurity, up taking the risk of entering an uncharted industry. 

Instead of jumping headfirst into building a popular solution, why not use those solutions to act on your next innovative product ideas?

For example, instead of investing resources into building an AI solution that might not sit well with your current customers, utilize existing AI solutions to help build your innovative ideas. This does two things for you: 

1. Streamlines your development and enhances your tech stack with new tech
2. Congruence between your new tool and current products can show opportunities within new industries

You’re able to mitigate the risk of innovation and operate in an industry you’re comfortable in while experiencing firsthand what other industry tools have to offer. It’s a win-win!

Chasing Innovation

These days, innovating can seem like a chase. With so many new products or services coming out daily, it’s hard not to feel like you’re falling behind if you’re not creating the next big thing. While disruptive innovation certainly puts your company in the spotlight, it’s important to focus on sustaining innovation, optimizing your internal operations. Whether innovation requires revamping your business model, creating internal innovative business solutions, or developing new customer experience interactions, your business innovation strategy should include ways to enhance your quality of life. As the name suggests, sustaining innovation is more sustainable and less risky than disruptive innovation, giving your company an edge over competitors staking it all on trying to manufacture the next big thing. 

Customer Innovation

A last consideration is your customers.

Disruptive innovation is exciting: wading through uncharted territory, creating something entirely new from nothing, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. While a new solution in a new space is enough to get your adrenaline pumping, will this be enough to keep your current customers happy?

Innovating, especially for bigger companies, is a constant balancing act between catering to your current customers versus creating for new customers. Each side has their own pros and cons. Catering to your current customers is safe, but can keep growth stagnant and slow down your innovation. Developing a new solution for a new market can grow your business exponentially and open it for a new set of customers, but it’s risky and might alienate the customers you know and love. Before developing a new product, assess whether your idea works with your current solutions and can be adopted by your current customers.

A Word to Innovative Startups

If you’re one of the many innovative startups out there, congratulations! Creating something new is scary, exciting, worrying- so many different things but most of all, bold. Taking a step to make the world a better place is something many dream of, but few actually do.

If my time operating Lyrid has taught me anything, it’s to always stay innovative and be open-minded to new tech.

As a startup, differentiating yourself from companies that have been operating in your space can be difficult. Creating things that have yet to be created is like finding a needle in a haystack, but it isn’t impossible. So many aspects of your business can be a unique value proposition, even if your product is the same as one out there. For example, customers may prefer your company to one offering the same product if your operations are optimized. Investors might prefer your company to other startups because you have one of the most innovative business models in the space. Anything in your business can be innovative, as long as you are. 

Differentiating yourself from others in the space also takes a certain amount of experience. One of the biggest unique selling points for a business is how efficiently they’re able to solve a problem compared to other companies. With experience in a certain space, you’re able to identify unique challenges that customers face, but haven’t been solved yet. Finding those problems that only you’re able to solve can make all the difference.

While innovating to set yourself apart from other innovative startup companies is key to differentiation, take your time and enjoy it. Innovation comes from inspiration, and despite the pressure of competition, it will always be hard to force inspiration. You might not be the next Tony Stark right now, but in the future you very well may be.

I love talking about all things startup, if you want to chat sometime book a call with me! At Lyrid, we host a startup program as well~ check it out if you're interested!