Are we ready for it?

The pace with which innovation and technology are evolving, are we ready for it yet? Do we get enough time to pause and reflect upon the new technology and relate its compatibility with the existing technology? Such queries are essential to adopt the emerging innovations completely and wholeheartedly. According to secondary research, about 70% of the senior leadership of any organization perceive innovation as one of the top focus areas of growth. This set goal is treated as a priority to gain a cutting edge over the competitors.

Zeal to adopt innovation

In desperation for innovation, organizations started investing in expensive programs such as competition related to innovation, rapid prototyping, hackathons, and innovative labs. Hence, of late corporate leaders are constantly trying to create a balance between investment and innovation. With set objectives and steep targets, corporate leaders lack patience and satisfaction of the end-result of investment in innovation. This is the cause due to which most companies thrive to succeed in the field of innovation without even assessing if the company is ready for innovation. Hence, the need of the hour is to ensure supporting internal structure, processes, and environment to create an atmosphere perfect for nurturing innovation.

Enterprises recently started analyzing the overall readiness of the organization towards innovation in order to sustain innovation in the long term. The following are the proven track adopted by the enterprises to accept technology with success.

Support of the leaders

For any innovation program to gain its desirable result, considerable and visible support from the leadership team is required. Since innovation is a repeatable process hence, the leadership team needs to spend time actively leading innovation. The guidance in the form of organized top-down knowledge transfer and innovation strategy can make the process strong. Moreover, the strategy should be detailed involving all employees across the organization and across all levels. A well-defined guideline will fasten the pace of the process.

Again, the allocation of a dedicated pool of resources is essential to ensure that the process of innovation progresses. Hence, companies are trying to allocate specific budget, time and resources to fulfill the requirement. Apart from involvement in the core business, leaders are investing time and energy in future growth opportunities.

Organizational and operational design

To ensure successful innovation, companies must focus on the compatibility of their structures. In fact, innovation should be developed as a culture with ideation, experimentation and iterative product development to become ingrained in the organizational structure. Companies have started practicing this by laying a career path that becomes an explicit part of the institutional structure.

Despite of having separate needs, organizations are trying to bridge the gap between the core business and the innovation team. More so, a dedicated rewards and incentive systems can boost employees to opt for the path of innovation apart from handling core business.

Practice innovation with true spirit!

Appropriate tools and a process in place can initiate the spirit of innovation so that, the innovators can design and test their ideas without facing issues due to the core business. Thus, companies should adopt the right tool to enhance designing capabilities and testing ideas. Also, it is evident that decision making regarding funding needs to be quick and accurate to leverage innovation. Again, the aspect of developing skills of individuals within the organization can not be ignored. It helps employees experience the aspect of being part of an innovation project.

Conclusion

With consistent support from the leadership team, modern and innovative organizational design and practice and support of innovation – an organization can become innovation ready and reap rich benefits from the process.

- Kathakali Basu
Content Writer
Infoholic Research