3 Best Innovation Management Practices

Hard work is imperative for success but is not enough on its own. You have to work smart too. Strategic thinking channels your team’s hard work in the right direction and takes it to the next level. Legendary entrepreneur Robert Half rightly summed efficient work as “the combination of hard work and smart work”.

Curious how the same rule applies to innovation management as well? Let’s check out the top 3 tried and tested best practices for successful innovation management that you should keep in mind!

3 Best Practices to Drive Successful Innovation Management

1. Establish a Culture of Information Exchange

Employees often do not feel motivated enough to give their best. This can be due to a number of reasons. However, one of the major factors is they do not have any clue how their individual contributions affect the company’s performance. When employees are made aware of how their hard work impacts the company, they feel encouraged and develop the willingness to go the extra mile. And this is one of the most valuable assets of an organization!

As an innovation manager, always instill a sense of ownership among your team members. Make them realize what they do is invaluable to the department as well as the company as a whole, and see the results for yourself!

2. Do not Play it Safe All the Time

When it comes to innovation, you cannot play it safe all the time. The essence of innovation is to try out new things. So, when something is new, no one knows for sure if the results will be in favor or against an organization’s objectives — one can only speculate, which of course, can go wrong. So, the best way to know for certain is to try it out. Is this risky? YES. But, is it worth it? Again, a big YES. Just think how Netflix started off with selling and renting DVDs and look where it is standing now! This wouldn’t have been possible if Netflix hadn’t taken the risk to get into streaming services and, eventually, in-house production.

If we still do not sound convincing enough, check out this article by Forbes that lists 8 successful products that only exist because of failure. It features some big names like Apple and Nintendo as well as the discovery of the ground-breaking medical device, the pacemaker!

3. Digitize the Innovation Process

After focusing on the two very specific aspects of innovation management, let’s broaden our horizon to the bigger picture, i.e., the corporate innovation process as a whole. Optimizing tasks is synonymous with working smart. And in this fast-paced tech-savvy world, you cannot afford to stay behind! So, to work smart, you need smart tools, such as the one we offer and the ones we think are some of the best in the market. These SaaS tools not only save your time but also enable you to make informed decisions, which is quite difficult and time-consuming with the manual process. Click here to explore more reasons to invest in these digital tools, especially innovation management software.

Now, it’s time for you to tell us — what other best practices do you find useful for successful innovation management? Get in touch & let us know!