How to make innovation work for your company.
“Digital Transformation,” what an awful, intangible phrase. Since it first came on to my radar around 2015, its just been none-sensical IT waffle.
Still to this day, people ask me “come on Adam, what does it really mean?”
What’s an even worse phrase? “Total Enterprise Reinvention.”
This is latest big thing that every c-suite digital and IT exec needs to be thinking about apparently according to Accenture. You have to factor in Quantum computing, the metaverse continuum, understand the ongoing technology revolution otherwise YOU ARE FAILING.
So here is my advice - ignore digital transformation, definitely ignore Total Enterprise Reinvention and focus on something that actually means something to your business that you can actually action. Take the small steps that will really shift the needle for your company, then you can think about the big IT stuff.
I think a really simple word, that actually means something, is innovation. Companies need to innovate, they need to do it in their own way and people actually understand what it means. It’s also something that can be started small, and grown without investing a boat load of money. Innovation is how your company moves forwards and evolves. Done properly, innovation should de-risk investment, validate your direction forwards and potentially save a lot of money.
The key thing is how do you make innovation work for your company? Where do you start? How do you execute it properly without risking budget and going down blind alleys?
After working with a lot of companies on their digital and innovation strategy I typically see quite a few common problems. There are a lot, but some include -
Organisational Silo’s - digital and innovation not working with other parts of their organisation.
Tech first mentality - companies focus on the latest shiny thing without really understanding why its relevant to them.
A lack of fail fast mentality - not willing to take small risks and realising that failure on a small scale is a learning not a problem but a bonus.
Lack of cross functional teams - a team with gaps in them to truly execute impactful innovation.
Whilst these are all common there is one major mistake which is fatal and stops innovation really working for a business: silo’d thinking.
As touched on above with organisations working in silo’s, this leads to silo’d thinking. Innovation needs to be fuelled by data. Data provides the inputs to form the basis of where you start and if you are operating in a silo then you are reducing the quality of the data to fuel your innovation approach.
At NuForm we see there are 3 key areas, or silo’s to continue on that theme and we look at them as a venn diagram - if they all overlap then you can reach impactful innovation that really drives results.
These key areas are -
Customer - what does the customer want? How do we know? Where are their frustrations now? What do they not know they need? How do we create connections at critical moments?
Commercial - What is going to make money for the company? What are the broader business goals? Is this organisation ready? Are all stakeholders bought in? Is the business unit aligned?
Technology - What is the technical landscape? What could be blockers to stop innovation? What is needed to execute? What are the gaps? What are the enablers?
What we often see is that businesses will often do 1 or 2 of these fairly well. What is great is that recently we see much more emphasis on CX, consumer psychology and the voice of the customer but this doesn’t matter if the business cannot execute on the voice of the customer. You need to factor in the three silo’s combined to really drive innovation.
Your company needs an innovation approach that factors in as much data and evidence from these areas of your company to ensure you have a cross pollinated foundation to execute your next digital product, IT investment.
This has been a passion for us since we started NuForm 3 years ago, and will continue to be so.
