Size Dose Not Matter

No matter the size of your company you must create internal entrepreneurship capabilities to stay competitive in the forever changing and growing global marketplace. We are not competing locally anymore, but internationally with some of the world’s top executives, entrepreneurs and businesses. New companies born are more dynamic, adaptive and receptive to new market demands that will surely put a comfortable organization out of business.

Getting to Comfortable = Risk

90% of organizations think they are too slow in innovation when it comes to entering a new market. 80% of their products and services released will also fail. Majority of the failures will occur due to entering the market late according to a recent article by Harvard Business Review. Even the largest organizations can get too comfortable and forget to keep up with the latest trends and advancements. This can be seen by looking at Kodiak, Blockbuster, Nortel, Sears and others. Organizations need to think of systematic ways to innovate.

Educate yourself, educate your employees

It all begins with education and let’s all agree, while innovation is important it’s not an easy task. Culture shifts towards innovation and collaboration pose a difficult task for all entrepreneurs and senior executives. For innovation to occur a company culture must change its environment toward flexibility and better communication, but most importantly it all needs to start with education. Innovation is a very broad word and a lot of individuals don’t understand there is a systematic way of approaching a better innovation ecosystem. Before innovation occurs, individuals need to educate themselves and most importantly their employees. 

Break the Barrier by Being More Active

Companies which take the approach to educate and encourage communication break the innovation barriers. New products, services, processes or even cultural ideas leap beyond all competition and create new advancements - competitors will be racing to catch up. A great example of this would be the mobile industry. Before touch screen phones all mobile organizations were competing in releasing a better same handheld device. This was the technological or you can call it the innovation barrier. There was nothing better in the market beyond these particular handheld devices. Flashy buttons, branding, marketing and hardware were the only differentiating factors separating them. Once touch screen phones were released a new innovation barrier was formed. In order to stay in the market all mobile companies now had to catch up or risk the fear of going out of business.

Will You Be Comfortable?

Which company are you going to be? Will you encourage innovation or be comfortable until your market experiences a drastic change. Let’s also remember innovation can be applied to your processes, cultures and services – not limited to products. These are the new leading innovation barriers you don’t get to see.