Five Ideas to Generate Innovations

Do you ever scratch your head and wonder how you can make yourself stand out from your competition?

I have thought about this many times myself, and I still have much to learn and a ways to go in this area.

However, I have learned of some ideas that do work and wanted to share them with you.

Imagine the Future

First, imagine what the future could look like three, five, or 10 years from now. Second, work backwards from there and figure out how you could evolve your product or service in that direction.

There are no limits to your imagination. As the saying goes, “what the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Focus on the Pain

What are your customers’ greatest pain points right now? If they could wave their magic wand and make those pain points go away what would that look like to them?

Ask them. Then listen, solve, and present to them. You may create a customer for life. Customers buy what our product or service does for them not the product or service itself.

Improve the Process

Consider what the process is for placing an order, making a sales call, or any other processes that your customer has in their business. Figure out how to streamline that process by taking time and steps out of the process.

Customers will love you for making their life easier.

Read About Related Fields

Innovations often come from applying technology or processes from other industries to our customers’ industries. Read up on those related fields and look for a nugget that makes their life easier.

Again, customers will love you for improving their life and making it better.

Read Voraciously

Read as much as you can in the area of innovation and be ready to consider how those ideas can be applied to your customers’ business or even your own business.

We can generate more ideas and combinations of ideas than we can possibly implement by reading material that causes us to think outside of our normal box.

Innovation is a key component of creating a lasting business. If we can build this into the culture and fabric of our companies we can build great customer relationships.

What ideas do you use to build more innovation into your business?