I listened recently to an interesting presentation with the title: "Soft Landings: Don't hunker down in a recession - differentiate yourself". It was delivered by someone with the title ‘Innovation Director’ and the basic message was to set your business apart from the crowd by coming up with an innovative product or service.
While I gained the distinct impression of good management skills in relation to the processes that follow the original idea, there was little on offer about how to come up with the original idea in the first place. The two main suggestions were
a) brainstorming among fellow workers and colleagues, and
b) talking to people outside the business, e.g. customers, suppliers, universities.
Both sound perfectly valid options for a business already of some size, but small and micro businesses are rarely able to make available either the time, or the resources needed.
The sole entrepreneur, faced with a blank sheet of paper and a demand to “be innovative”, does not know how. In such circumstances “new” and “original” seem beyond them. The path of least resistance is to work harder, faster, cheaper and do more of what they already know.
However, all is not lost. There are ways that a small business can begin to stimulate thought and a fresh approach without spending quantities of time and money they don’t have. And your new ideas will be yours for free until you act on them.
It is very possible that this could be the time you make some kind of shift in a way that enables you to make a massive leap forward starting right now, all dependent on your willingness to look.
It can be much easier than you think to throw all the known rules out of the window for a while. You can get them back later if you choose and when and how you wish. For the time being explore the endless possibilities on many different levels.
Most people get hampered by thinking about what can't be done and who they are not. Rather, as you relax, think of what you could do and what you could become. There are always far more options that you could allow for as you begin to feel good about the future.
Here are some quick and easy ways passed those roadblocks of the conscious mind:
1) Start with what you do – what the client buys – not the label you apply to your job.
2) Without constraints or limitations, suggest other ways it could be done – when, where, how, who and why.
3) Whatever you do – what’s like it a) in the same sector, b) in adjacent sectors c) in unrelated sectors?
4) How could you deliver the same product, or service you do now into different sectors?
5) Go dictionary dipping: close your eyes, open a dictionary, place your finger on the page, take a look. What word did you point to? Pretend it has something to do with your business. How would you apply it?
6) Go Yellow Pages dipping using a similar technique. Whatever trade or service it comes up with – could you do that? How would you diversify into that sector? And how would you integrate your current business?
7) What hobbies do you, your family and friends enjoy. How do they apply to your business? In what ways could you use them to provide something that would differentiate you?
8) How is X like Y? How is accounting like a tree? How are electrical services like the moon? Find as many similarities as you can. Start with ten.
9) Benchmark the competition. What are they already doing that you could copy easily? And think as widely as possible. When it is a question of discretionary spending a package holiday could find itself in competition with a new car for the money.
10) Look at other diversified businesses. What strange combinations are there and in what ways do they work to support each other? Retailers offering insurance is one. Electrical retailers, e.g. Dixons, have offered product insurance on the goods they sell and made huge margins doing so. Tesco offers car insurance and sells it on the strength of its own brand name. What could you do?
10.5) Finally and perhaps most telling, true innovation may not be necessary. In any field of endeavour 80% of the money is earned by 20% of the players. What they do differently is but a tiny improvement on the competition, but the competition is generally so poor anyway that a small difference is all they need.
To help you stay where you are and to mine the “acres of diamonds” that are already there see David Winch’s article ‘Succeeding in spite of yourself’.
While I gained the distinct impression of good management skills in relation to the processes that follow the original idea, there was little on offer about how to come up with the original idea in the first place. The two main suggestions were
a) brainstorming among fellow workers and colleagues, and
b) talking to people outside the business, e.g. customers, suppliers, universities.
Both sound perfectly valid options for a business already of some size, but small and micro businesses are rarely able to make available either the time, or the resources needed.
The sole entrepreneur, faced with a blank sheet of paper and a demand to “be innovative”, does not know how. In such circumstances “new” and “original” seem beyond them. The path of least resistance is to work harder, faster, cheaper and do more of what they already know.
However, all is not lost. There are ways that a small business can begin to stimulate thought and a fresh approach without spending quantities of time and money they don’t have. And your new ideas will be yours for free until you act on them.
It is very possible that this could be the time you make some kind of shift in a way that enables you to make a massive leap forward starting right now, all dependent on your willingness to look.
It can be much easier than you think to throw all the known rules out of the window for a while. You can get them back later if you choose and when and how you wish. For the time being explore the endless possibilities on many different levels.
Most people get hampered by thinking about what can't be done and who they are not. Rather, as you relax, think of what you could do and what you could become. There are always far more options that you could allow for as you begin to feel good about the future.
Here are some quick and easy ways passed those roadblocks of the conscious mind:
1) Start with what you do – what the client buys – not the label you apply to your job.
2) Without constraints or limitations, suggest other ways it could be done – when, where, how, who and why.
3) Whatever you do – what’s like it a) in the same sector, b) in adjacent sectors c) in unrelated sectors?
4) How could you deliver the same product, or service you do now into different sectors?
5) Go dictionary dipping: close your eyes, open a dictionary, place your finger on the page, take a look. What word did you point to? Pretend it has something to do with your business. How would you apply it?
6) Go Yellow Pages dipping using a similar technique. Whatever trade or service it comes up with – could you do that? How would you diversify into that sector? And how would you integrate your current business?
7) What hobbies do you, your family and friends enjoy. How do they apply to your business? In what ways could you use them to provide something that would differentiate you?
8) How is X like Y? How is accounting like a tree? How are electrical services like the moon? Find as many similarities as you can. Start with ten.
9) Benchmark the competition. What are they already doing that you could copy easily? And think as widely as possible. When it is a question of discretionary spending a package holiday could find itself in competition with a new car for the money.
10) Look at other diversified businesses. What strange combinations are there and in what ways do they work to support each other? Retailers offering insurance is one. Electrical retailers, e.g. Dixons, have offered product insurance on the goods they sell and made huge margins doing so. Tesco offers car insurance and sells it on the strength of its own brand name. What could you do?
10.5) Finally and perhaps most telling, true innovation may not be necessary. In any field of endeavour 80% of the money is earned by 20% of the players. What they do differently is but a tiny improvement on the competition, but the competition is generally so poor anyway that a small difference is all they need.
To help you stay where you are and to mine the “acres of diamonds” that are already there see David Winch’s article ‘Succeeding in spite of yourself’.
1 comment:
A great set of thoughts, Paul. As you suggest, there's loads of advice out there on how to exploit a new idea, but precious little on how to have new ideas in the first place.
I've just been listening to marketing guru Chris Cardell talking about the Joy of Failure, where he encourages people to try as many new things as they can, on a scale small enough that getting no return at all won't hurt too much, so that there are never any 'failures', only ever 'results' you can learn from. And of course to do this you need the new ideas to try too.
I look forward to hearing more from you.
David
P.S. Thanks for the link to my 'Succeeding in Spite of Yourself' article
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