What is the issue?
- The gravity of business growth is shifting from capital to creativity, and in this, the market belongs to the most vigorous innovator.
- In this context, here is an assessment on the challenges and priorities for the business community in the innovation economy.
What is the emerging trend and how should businesses evolve?
- Innovation economy is that which is light on assets and heavy on knowledge.
- Data is overtaking experience in making decisions and directing strategy.
- ML (Machine Learning), IoT (Internet of Things), and blockchain are becoming vital for producing innovations.
- Businesses will have to be equipped with the tools for acquiring, analyzing and applying data intelligence.
- Skilling every employee to work in a highly automated environment is also essential.
- The innovation economy takes away security from businesses.
- But it offers unprecedented rewards in the form of lightning-fast growth and great market dominance.
- In the innovation economy, an unconventional and risk-taking mindset is the key to business leadership.
- It is also essential to break away from the business models that cannot keep up with the market’s evolution.
- A modern business leader must have a strategy to reinvent even a successful business.
- The first-mover advantage (gained by a company from being the first to establish itself in a given market) is brief.
- This is because capital and technology are now easily accessible to anyone.
- So it is much easier to imitate and enhance a successful product in the new economy than it used to be.
- Therefore, besides being quick with innovations, companies also have to continuously listen to the user and upgrade products frequently.
- The main feature of innovation in the new economy is the delivery of total solution to the customer.
- Aggregation and intermediation are central to innovation and delivering convenience, efficiency and economy to the customer.
- Innovation, in this context, is more of a collaborative venture.
- Business leaders have to persuade investors, employees, suppliers, customers and even regulators to back disruptive innovations.
- Regulators are increasingly playing a critical role in bringing innovations to market.
- Bringing an innovation to customers can take a lot of money and work hours without any guarantees of returns.
- Business heads thus need to be determined and resilient, and they have to keep betting on crazy ideas.
- It also requires them to be in touch with the ground realities as innovation is often a bottom-up process.
- Maintaining direct communication with customer-facing employees is essential to ensure that middle management does not block either information or ideas.
- Leaders of conventional businesses face the challenge of insuring the future with innovations while preserving existing revenues.
- One way of preserving a successful business and reinventing it at the same time is to sandbox innovations.
- [A parallel organisation may be set up to experiment with disruptive products and models.
- If the alternate venture succeeds in taking the market away from conventional competitors, the mother company could be absorbed in it.]
Source: Financial Express
