Digital Innovation – The Key To Business Success
Imagine climbing a mountain – the peak of business success. With each step, you feel closer to achieving growth and efficiency for your organization. But as you ascend, the terrain shifts from easy climbs to sheer cliffs that require more creative solutions.
The digital age has changed the hiking path for many businesses, and it only gets more obscure by the year. As a solution to this issue, companies have pivoted to digital transformation. However, a staggering 70% of large-scale digital transformation initiatives fail due to a lack of engagement, support, collaboration, and accountability.
That’s where digital innovation comes into play. Where digital transformation looks at changing the entire path up the mountain, digital innovation looks for new ways to tackle the very next cliff face.
This article will look at the fundamentals of digital innovation and how it can be used to make data-informed, agile decisions in response to an ever-shifting market.
What is Digital Innovation?
Digital innovation looks at the short-term goals of a company and finds new, exciting, and creative ways to achieve them. It is a quick response to the rockslide of market demands.
Consistency is key, as each innovation acts as one step along the path toward continued growth. By the time you’ve fully implemented a new tactic, there will be another challenge coming down the pipe.
Innovation can look like updating your product line, improving customer experience, or creating new services. It can also involve finding ways to optimize existing processes and make them more efficient.
Digital innovation is both an art and a science. It requires understanding the customer’s needs as well as a deep knowledge of technology. Companies must be willing to embrace change if they want to stay competitive in this ever-evolving world.
Benefits of Digital Innovation
Digital innovation can help businesses increase their reach, create new revenue streams, and improve customer service. It is also a great way to stay ahead of the competition and tap into opportunities that would otherwise be missed.
Digital innovation allows companies to respond quickly to changes in the market without sacrificing quality. By staying ahead of trends and adapting quickly to changing conditions, organizations can seize the competitive edge and become leaders in their field.
Taking many little steps towards change is more cost-effective than always focusing on the major upheaval usually associated with digital transformation. Maybe your company can not pivot to an entirely new way of doing things, but you can certainly start to implement small yet effective changes that can help you reach the peak of success.
Challenges of Digital Innovation
Staying on top of the day-to-day changes is an uphill battle. Your organization must be prepared to prioritize and then tackle specific issues to be effective.
Understanding exactly what your customers want is a major component of successful digital innovation. You can not make little changes that don’t improve the quality of the product or user experience simply for the sake of innovation.
Make sure you have ample channels to connect with your customer base and that you are listening to what they have to say. This can look like user-driven innovation or collecting a steady stream of data to help you make the hard decisions.
Stormboard has dozens of template that can help product and management teams align with their customers.
Communication with your teams is equally vital. If the importance of innovation and the logistics of each step are not made clear, it will lead to disorder and a lack of motivation between teams.
Without allowing everyone within your organization to contribute their diverse ideas, you might miss out on the perfect solution to a problem. Make sure there is a clear way for your team to brainstorm together and that you truly listen when solutions are brought forward.
Utilizing tools like Stormboard helps democratize the innovation process. We help make brainstorming easy, inclusive, and fun, while providing up-to-date information that your team can check in on whenever they need to make a change.
The biggest limiting factor to continued innovation is a lack of drive. Your team has to understand how important these continual changes are to the health of your business. Otherwise, it will be near impossible to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape.
Digital Innovation vs Digital Transformation
Ideally, digital innovation and digital transformation will both be important parts of your business strategy. The two concepts work together and bolster each other.
While daily changes will help you move toward the ultimate goal of transformation, each complete shift will make it easier to innovate. It’s a feedback loop that, if utilized correctly, will help you gain and maintain a competitive advantage.
This is why having a strategy in place for both digital transformation and digital innovation is so imperative. You need to know where you are going to make sure each innovation adds up to your ultimate goal. You also have to have a constant flow of data coming in so that you can flag areas where innovation will be necessary, and track the success of your changes.
How to Encourage Digital Innovation
Creating a culture of innovation is the most important thing a company can do to make way for continuous digital innovation. Your team is your greatest resource, and when you empower them, they will be scaling cliff faces in no time. Here are a few ways to encourage that growth.
Hiring the Right People
A strong hike starts before you even reach the base camp. Hiring with innovation in mind will help cultivate an inquisitive, creative, and diverse pool of talent to draw on. You can start by implementing recruitment tools to help shortlist candidates and get the right people in front of you.
Creating an Innovative Environment
Make sure the physical and digital environment you create is one of collaboration, exploration, and experimentation. Make space to brainstorm ideas, give feedback on projects, and encourage team members to speak up when they have new insights or innovative solutions.
Recognizing Innovation
Innovation can take on many shapes and forms in a business setting. Whether it’s uncovering a new market opportunity or introducing fresh processes that save time, recognizing innovation should be part of your company culture. Show appreciation for those who take risks with their work by giving them public recognition or rewards like employee-of-the-month.
These are just a few of the steps you can take to foster digital innovation. By creating an environment that encourages creativity and risk-taking, your team will be able to find new ways to solve problems and push boundaries - leading to business success.
Final Thoughts
With so much focus on complete transformation, it can be easy to overlook the importance of innovation on a daily basis. Just as climbing a mountain requires small steps to reach the summit, digital innovation can be achieved by making incremental improvements every day.
It’s through continuous exploration of new technologies, collaborative tools, and methods that we can start to transform our businesses for the better - even if it’s one change at a time.
With the right approach, today's challenges can become tomorrow's successes - and with each successful climb, you'll be ready to take on whatever mountain lies ahead.
Industry-changing innovation starts with equipping your team with the right tools to be successful.
Stormboard’s experts are here to help your business stay current and set a path for the future. Click the button below to schedule a no-obligation product walk-through to learn where Stormboard fits into your innovative future.
About the author:
A programmer by trade, Nick Saraev is a freelance writer and entrepreneur with a penchant for helping people excel in their careers. He's been featured on Popular Mechanics & Apple News, and has founded several successful companies in e-commerce, marketing, and artificial intelligence. When he's not working on his latest project, you can find him hiking or painting.
