For me, the idea of innovation is best summarized by Sir Isaac Newton: “A body at motion, stays in motion; a body at rest, stays at rest.”
In other words, if you’re not constantly trying to improve, you’re dooming yourself (or, more specifically, your business) to watching your competition gleefully pass you by.
As a CEO, you might have a successful business that’s growing steadily and making its impact on the world. Your customers are happy. You have a backlog full of useful feature requests, and your development teams are running like well-oiled machines.
But for some reason you feel like there’s something being left on the table.
Sure, you’re answering the needs of today’s customers, but what about tomorrow? Yes, your business is growing, but could it be scaling more quickly or expanding to different verticals?
Breaking free from the guardrails of your traditional product development can be difficult. Innovation feels risky, with the potential to crash and burn on a failed venture. But for your business to continue moving forward, innovation is imperative.
What does it mean to innovate?
Innovation comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be in the form of something as small as a process change or as monumental as a new technology framework. But in all its sizes and forms, you know it does one thing: it moves the needle. Though it’s sometimes hard to explain, you know it when you see it.
Most notable innovations, the ones that change the way we live, are often the product of numerous incremental changes, each of which may be quite small. As they say, great things have small beginnings. Though you may crave revolution, your customers and the market will often react more favorably to a pattern of evolution, that in hindsight will look revolutionary. This is what lights the fire to take a business to the next level, while keeping things real and not betting the farm on a years-long next-gen product or project.
3 Reasons to Innovate
1. Innovation lights up new revenue streams by enabling a company to differentiate its products and services.
Innovation drives the world forward. Steam engines, the motorized car, and SpaceX were all inspired and created by a combination of breakthroughs in design, engineering, and manufacturing. From there, entire industries formed and economic paradigms shifted. With each new advancement, the world changed.
This form of innovation is what drives commerce. By finding new solutions to existing problems, you differentiate yourself and provide a new approach to the world.
Software companies innovate by stretching the bounds of what is possible. These innovations come in the form of new product functionality or an improvement of existing functionality. For some, it’s maybe even an infrastructure or framing change that offers a totally new perspective and use case of what already exists.
2. Innovation opens doors by driving down production costs.
Innovation doesn’t always have to come in the form of new products or services. A simple process change or efficiency gained can mean a magnitude of difference for a business. If you can reduce the time it takes for an engineer to build, he or she now has that much more capacity to focus on the next idea.
This same concept is inherent with smart software design. By spending just a bit more time thinking through and designing for future potential use cases, engineers can build improved flexibility and reusability into products, or can even deliver to you a platform instead of just a product, all with perhaps only 10% more effort. The ROI on this small extra effort is insane. Remember that reusability breeds profitability and provides you with a compounded return on your investment. We talk about reusability in another post, and it’s one of the best ways we see teams pushing forward today.
3. Innovation sets a global footprint.
We don’t remember those companies that failed to innovate. It’s as simple as that.
The businesses and people that we’ve come to know and love as innovators do things differently. Innovations that lead to a better user experience are often what are remembered for generations. This legacy and goodwill alone can be the sole reason you’d want to consider an innovation strategy.
Almost anyone on planet Earth can tell you what an iPhone is, and that’s because it was a step ahead of everyone else in almost every way. A handheld computer that doubles as a camera, GPS, business center, and social lifeline – plus, it just looks really, really cool!
The incremental changes to creating a global footprint don’t always happen overnight, but there are actionable ways to set a path forward with an innovation strategy.
4 Ways to Drive Innovation in Software Development
1. Invest in implementing and executing great ideas.
Unfortunately, I see many companies miss the first step of this, which is allocating time to purposefully innovate. Ideas don’t come from thin air, and you have to have a structured plan for idea generation and execution.
As a software team, your engineers are your greatest asset. You will see guaranteed ROI every time by providing your team the space and time to have ideas and a platform where they can express, promote and implement them.
It starts with investing the time and having a structured plan for idea generation. Whether it’s a number of hours per week or a creative project every quarter, carve out a platform for ideas to bubble up.
2. Recognize and reward outstanding performance.
Your team members are human, and humans respond to incentives. Don’t waste your engineers’ brain space having them worry about whether their performance is getting noticed. It should be inherently known that great work will be rewarded. When your employees have that comfort, they will be much more inspired and focused on the company goals.
In software it’s often an arduous process to truly innovate and come to a breakthrough. It can sometimes require long hours or even “off-the-clock” work to think through a design or test out a proof of concept. Make sure your team members know that the work will be worth it.
3. Create a functional workspace.
Creativity thrives in a stimulating environment. If your employees are coming into the office, give them something to look forward to. Comfortable spaces and proper lighting are the top priorities, as is access to the best coffee you can afford!
Creative minds all think and work differently, and your engineers and designers may have different ways that they perform their best work, whether in the office or as they work remotely. Mix up the space with collaborative areas, whiteboards, and quiet rooms to provide something for everyone–all these concepts apply equally well to in-person or virtual work. Tools like Lucid, Miro, and even DropBox/OneDrive will foster collaboration, innovative thinking and teamwork, even if team members are thousands of miles away. You just need to give them the time to think, dream, talk, and draw. A virtual happy hour in front of a shared digital whiteboard with a Zoom meeting going the whole time and drinks in everyone’s hand…show your people you trust and love them. They’ll pay it back with innovation.
4. Give employees permission to fail.
The old quote by Thomas Edison, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” holds a special place in my heart. One of the greatest innovators of the last few centuries embraced failure as a vital part of the process. Individuals should be encouraged to grow and not be afraid of failure, taking into account that every idea matters and is worth considering.
Additionally, the atmosphere must be motivating and fun. Priorities still exist, but with a proper plan in place you can shift the mindset of your team to celebrate failure as a growing opportunity.
Crafting an Innovation Strategy for your Business
Creating world-changing products and services doesn’t happen overnight, but the right steps can start immediately. It starts with an intention to innovate and a plan behind it.
Modularis and PlatformPlus frees your team to innovate. We help flip the current development process on its head, reducing the time you spend on maintenance so you can spend more on innovation. See how we’ve helped companies completely turn the ship around and build lasting solutions.
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Innovation is imperative to building a lasting business. Contact us today to see how we can help your company start its path to meaningful innovation with your software development team.