When it’s done effectively, innovation defines a roadmap, sets explicit objectives, and provides a guide for everyone in your organisation to follow.

There are two issues that innovation must resolve to succeed:

1. The need for change must be owned right across an organisation.
2. There must be someone to do the work after the training team has departed.

Let’s deal with #1 today…

Because the ‘need’ for change is the hardest.

Companies evolve to be super-efficient at delivering their product or service. Their systems and processes develop to avoid waste, and every aspect of production and client service is streamlined for profitability.

Kaisen, Lean, J.I.T. and all the other Toyota Business System-inspired processes help to do this. While everything within the company’s control stays the same, it’s all good – operationally.

So, why worry?

Well, the need for change has a habit of sneaking up on you – not necessarily because you don’t see it coming, but because there isn’t a process to decide what should change, or a system to manage that change.

Knowing that a trend will, unavoidably, hit your top and bottom line isn’t enough. Once you’ve acknowledged that probability, the hardest part is convincing your peers and your management that they should take note of it too.

One of the ways that room44 tackles this challenge is to deliver innovation training in the most democratic and agnostic manner: across the workforce and from top to bottom.

If we can’t gain the support of your directors before we kick off, we won’t start. Resistance to the need for innovation must be resolved before a project gets underway.

It’s been suggested that company directors only ever see 4% of the problems that affect their business. If we start from there, alert the right people to what is coming down the line, and change some perspectives, we can have a significant impact on a company’s chances of survival as its market changes.

We’ve become very good at opening the eyes of management to the reality of their situation. To talk about your management team/ leadership team/ board of directors, please get in touch. 

Here’s how Click here.

Innovation consultants aren’t obvious in every coffee shop. We can’t be picked out by our black uniform (architects), or that slightly dishevelled and wired look (junior doctors), or even the button-down shirted, penny loafer and blue suit-wearing business type (McKinsey). We are a relatively rare breed that sits on a stool with a quizzical look. We’re what Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and Graylock fame calls ‘the infinite learner’.

Question everything

In room44’s case, we have an internal mantra that sits at the heart of our brand essence –  question everything. How did you get to where you are? Why do you still do what you do? Have you seen that trend yet? How about the macro trend sitting out in the future that promises to knock your growth plan off-course, or that looks like an opportunity to latch onto?

One of the reasons our clients work with room44 is our enquiring minds – the most central tenet of which is: who is it for?

Consumer-centricity sits at the core of our being. We don’t work to deliver ‘innovation’. We work to create a strategy that delivers products and services to let your customers experience innovation: a better experience, or a more satisfying solution to their problem.

The father of disruptive innovation, Clayton Christensen, defined it as being what creates new markets by discovering new categories of customers. In our opinion, the best place to start to disrupt is from an established market position. From this position, you have everything you need to succeed and all the tools a start-up would kill for: customers, brand presence, market penetration, shelf space, relationships, track record, trust and revenue.

In the coffee shop

When we’re in the coffee shop, we watch. When we’re at the bus stop, we watch. When we’re at the checkout, we watch, and when we aren’t watching, we’re reading or listening. There’s a good reason for this. There’s as much merit in observing people going about normal business as there is in dive into the internet. In fact, they’re interrelated. Seeing the world in action and following a line of enquiry with ‘why?’ at the heart of the matter is essential to the development of new ways to meet consumer need.

This is how we learn and how we apply an objective consumer perspective to any market segment.

To learn how an innovation consultant can help your business, you can read our guide to strategic innovation. We call it the Programme for Changemakers.

[button link=”http://room44-co-uk-4918163.hs-sites.com/programme” type=”big” newwindow=”yes”] Access The Programme for Changemakers here.[/button]

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.