“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” — Peter F. Drucker
Which innovation can amplify your impact or save you time or create more value?
It’s when you innovate in your approach.
It’s one thing to try to innovate in your products. It’s another to innovate your process.
Innovating in your process can unleash your capability, create more value, reduce costs, and take things to a whole new level or modus operandi.
To get in the right mindset, you have to think of your business as a product. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working from home or working in a large corporation, your system of results is an opportunity for innovation.
Innovating in Your Approach Keeps You In the Game
I’ve experienced the benefits of process innovation first-hand. I’ve run multiples projects and multiple teams and I’ve experimented with various approaches over the years.
Having created both product innovations and innovating in terms of approach, I think it’s innovating in my approach that has carried me further and continues to serve me far better than any other innovation type.
When I innovate in my approach, I unblock innovation and turn insights into results. My systems for results are far more important than any particular product.
The other thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t keep innovating in your approach, you get pushed out of the market. You can no longer compete, because you end up too slow, too expensive, or too rigid.
In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about focusing your innovation efforts on your business habits and practices.
Innovation Does New Things
Creativity is thinking, but innovation is doing:
Via The E-Myth Revisited:
“Innovation is often thought of as creativity. But as Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt points out, the difference between creativity and Innovation is the difference between thinking about getting things done in the world and getting things done. Says Professor Levitt, ‘Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.’”
Innovate Your Approach
Focus your innovation efforts on your process.
Via The E-Myth Revisited:
“The Franchise Revolution has brought with it an application of innovation that has been almost universally ignored by American business. By recognizing that it is not the commodity that demands Innovation but the process by which it is sold, the franchisor aims his innovative energies at the way in which his business does business.
To the franchisor, the entire process by which the business does business is a marketing tool, a mechanism for finding and keeping customers. Each and every component of the business system is a means through which the franchisor can differentiate his business from all other businesses in the mind of his consumer.”
Your Business is the Product
Your business is your product:
Via The E-Myth Revisited:
“Where the business is the product, how the business interacts with its consumer is more important than what it sells. And how doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective.
In fact, some of the most powerful Innovations have required little more than the change of a few words, a gesture, the color of clothing.
Innovation, then, is the mechanism through which your business identifies itself in the mind of your customer and establishes its individuality. It is the result of a scientifically generated and quantifiably verified profile of your customer’s perceived needs and unconscious expectations.”
The "Best Way" Skill
Innovation is the "best way" skill:
Via The E-Myth Revisited:
“It is the skill developed within your business and your people that is constantly asking, ‘What is the best way to do this?’ knowing, even as the question is asked, that we will never discover the best way, but by asking we will assuredly discover a way that’s better than the one we know now.
In that regard, I think of Innovation as the "Best Way" skill.
It produces a high level of energy in every company within it’s nurtured, fed, and stimulated, energy that in turn feeds everyone the company touches — it’s employees, customers, suppliers, and lenders. In an innovative company everyone grows. There’s no doubt about it: Innovation is the signature of a bold, imaginative hand.”
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:
- Innovation does new things. I like this distinction between creativity and innovation. I often see smart people with great ideas get stuck thinking, but not doing doing and learning. Analysis paralysis is one of the worst enemies of results.
- Innovate in your approach. Your approach is your system for results. If you innovate here, you can amplify your impact, save time and create more value.
- Your business is your product. Adopting this mindset helps you shift from thinking about innovation in your product, to innovation in your process.
- Know your system for results. Hunt and gather your processes and procedures. Walk your processes end-to-end and you’ll quickly start to find areas for improvements.
How can you do what you do, better, faster, cheaper?
Just asking the question will start your mind on the right path to unleashing your more resourceful self.
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