If you keep doing what you've always done, your business won't exist in 3 years. Now you might debate the timeframe but it's harder to debate the sentiment. All businesses need to focus on improving, if you don't, it's going to get harder and harder to maintain your sales, your margins and keep your staff engaged and loyal to your business.



There are two ways you can innovate, firstly you can build on an existing product or service to make it better or you create something entirely new, that fulfils an existing need in a new and novel way. Obviously the time and the risking involved are greater with the second option, however the rewards are great as there is the opportunity to dramatically change the market in your favour.

What's important is to innovate everyday and get into a process and a habit of innovation. Look for small innovations as well as the big breakthrough ideas. Here are three ideas for you to use to improve your innovation skills;

1.Define your objectives. A key point with innovation is to define the objectives for the project you're setting out on. Define it in terms of the outputs you're expecting, the product area you're looking at, the type of customers that you're looking at and the problems that need to be solved for them. The more defined you can make your objectives, the better chance you will have of innovating successfully. However don't define things too literally or too tightly as this may become restrictive. Allow for some looseness at the start of the process and then tighten things up once you've identified a wide range of solutions.

2.Understand the Innovation area. Thomas Edison was one of the world's greatest innovators with over 1097 individual patents. One of his philosophies was "Study and read everything you can on the subject". Understand the current products and immerse yourself in the area where you are looking to innovate. Talk to your key users and learn from them too.

3.Generate lots of potential solutions. Try to develop as many different solutions as you can. The more options you generate the better chance of developing something truly great and unique. Don't stop at the first option you think would satisfy your objectives, look to build on that and find something better.

Innovation is something that you have to work at everyday. Don't wait for the big insight to pop into your head. Innovation doesn't happen on command. However if you set up the right environment, do the right preparation and practice then innovation will start to flow as you get into the zone.