What is business innovation and how is it implemented in a company?

The business innovation is a concept that refers to the continuous improvement in products, services, and processes of a company, especially important in such a competitive environment like this where we are today. It is the engine that drives the economy and companies, which makes them grow. Without innovation, organizations would not have been able to improve their productivity, and consequently, the economy would not have grown in the way that it has.

Not surprisingly, throughout history, companies that have wanted to differentiate themselves within their sector have had to apply business innovation techniques in their main production processes to gain or maintain market share. For this reason, business innovation is a fundamental element in many companies and an added value for others, which seek to improve their position in the market.

How to implement business innovation?

Developing an innovative process requires certain skills and abilities on the part of the teams, in order to acquire a series of competitive advantages over the competition. These are not just techniques, but they are also related to creativity and initiative.

That said, there are a series of steps that companies should follow to carry out a correct business innovation process :

Analyze competition and society in general to detect consumer preferences and the activity of other organizations. In this way, new ideas useful for the innovative process can be identified.
Carry out an internal analysis of the company, since it is useless to promote a business innovation process if it is not aligned with the culture, politics, and limits of the organization.
Encourage creativity, conscientiously, as another business activity. Creativity is a fundamental element to innovate.
Structure a work team and have a specific department that is capable of taking advantage of the company’s previous experience to resolve future conflicts.
Design and develop the ideas, setting the idea of branding, the marketing that will accompany it, or the details of its presence on the web, among many other aspects.

Types of business innovation

The business innovation can be of various kinds, depending on their nature:

Technological innovation. It is one that corresponds to a technical or scientific advancement in the field of technology. An example would be a machine of some kind that allows several processes to be automated.
Organizational innovation. It is the one that refers to the way in which business management is structured. Its objective is to streamline the hierarchy of the company through a much more optimized structure. As examples, we can speak of a restructuring of human resources that allows employees to rise in a way that is much more adapted to their interests, or the application of agile methodologies.
Business innovation. This places special emphasis on the marketing of the company, that is, in the way in which a product or service is made known and its distribution. Its objective is to ensure that the user perceives the company’s product as the best, the cheapest and / or the one with the highest quality.

Examples of business innovation

There are different areas of the company in which business innovation can be applied :

The internal processes of the company, from billing and accounting to customer relations. In this case, business innovation is applied through different computer applications that automate processes as much as possible, thereby increasing added value, avoiding human errors and making workers dedicate themselves to what really generates productivity. These applications include ERPs and CRMs .
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a fashionable topic due to the greater ecological awareness of consumers. Companies are increasingly concerned about sustainability and caring for their customers, an area in which more and more business innovations are being introduced.
The development of new products or services that align with the changing preferences of consumers. The need is identified and a solution is offered to it and an element of value.
The work team. It no longer serves only to use people for mechanical processes; It is increasingly important to introduce creativity, counting on collaborators and professionals who carry out specific functions.

The business innovation of the future, already here: more digital and widespread

There is no doubt that business innovation must go hand in hand with a digital transformation that has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, business innovation will be increasingly generalized, since there are different simulation programs that allow obtaining results in a simple way according to specific parameters.

It can be said that the future of innovation is already here, especially accelerated by the paradigm shift that emerged after the health crisis. According to the Technology Vision 2021 report , prepared by Accenture, the development of digitization and business innovation processes expected for the next decade in leading companies has been compressed to a period of between one and two years.

Not surprisingly, according to the study, 92% of managers affirm that their organization is innovating urgently, while 91% say that, to control the market of tomorrow, organizations must define it and become “masters of change ”Through three key imperatives :

Incorporating technology into business strategy.
Reinventing itself from now on.
Designing more sustainable and inclusive models.

In short, business innovation is reaching broad layers of the sector thanks to the efforts of companies to improve and increase their digitization. Hopefully, in the future, this will serve to innovate even more. Is your business up to date on the improvements available to it?

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