Business Practices for Innovation

Vijay Sardana
Techno-legal Expert

Advocate, Supreme Court of India 
Innovation & Risk Management Specialist

In the knowledge economy and in the competitive world, the point of differentiation between progressive and stagnant organizations is resources including time commitment toward innovation.

Innovation is and will remain the key driver for the success of any organization in the future. For survival, businesses must continually innovate and adapt the same at a faster speed to outperform their rivals for survival and to attract investments. Creative disruptions will decide the future of the competitors.

The most important element in the innovation ecosystem is the need to retain an innovative and fertile mind. This will bring serious conflict between seniority and competency. Organizations must strive for competent human resources irrespective of age. If organizations are unable to identify and retain competent people, their existence is at risk. 

People are knowledge carriers. Computers store data, not knowledge. The most important area where business leaders must spend most of their time and effort is ensuring competent human resources are identified, groomed, and retained in the organization.  

Creative people need space to think beyond hierarchical boundaries. This means it is high time organizations restructure their internal system to provide space for fresh minds so that they can think of creative solutions. Out-of-box ideas must be encouraged. Crazy concepts need to be evaluated carefully before rejecting them outright. 

People prefer to join good organizations but they quit when they have to deal with bad leadership. Organizations must also relook into their internal policies. The top management focus should be on performance. Policies must be modified to encourage talent to flourish and at the same time minimize resource and time wastage without imposing too many constraints on experimental innovative brains.

The most important motivation for innovators is when they realize that top management is listening to them. Therefore, it is vital to eliminate the artificially created multi-layer barriers due to the outdated organizational structure between top management and innovators. Study of Successful Start-ups will provide many insights to mature organizations.

To create an innovative environment within the organizations, innovative business practices every organization should include are:

• Encourage innovation intelligence at all levels for informed decision-making

• Encourage to work on diversified revenue streams to minimize risks in the uncertain business environment

• Review old system of appraisal and performance to remove dead weights and implement agile methodologies to encourage innovations for faster results

• Promoting intrapreneurship to identify innovative brains within the organizations.

• Embrace remote work to prevent traveling time and resource wastage for better results at low cost

• Adopting sustainable practices from the concept stage itself

Innovation is the only way to survive. Competitors including start-ups are working hard and exploring all options for faster growth and to push competition out of the game for bigger market share.

What about your organization and you? What is your Innovation Policy?

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