How important is innovation to your business or organisation’s everyday operations? A recent survey conducted by Lloyds Bank asked SMEs exactly that. It revealed that while almost all firms want to bolster their innovation levels (91%), two thirds of them face barriers to innovation. In fact, it’s essential for SMEs to innovate if they want to achieve sustainable growth and remain competitive. The positive impact of innovation is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Lloyds Bank survey showed that for every £1 invested in research and development, SMEs could expect to gain an extra £1.74 in sales. Plus, some 43% of those surveyed said that innovation had helped them to win new customers and 37% said it had made them more attractive to a higher calibre of employee.
This month, IOEE Academy Gconsultancy Innovation is hosting a Design Thinking workshop, a two-day event that sets out to help attendees explore ways of boosting innovation across their organisations. Chief creative officer at Gconsultancy Innovation, Julia Goga Cooke, tells us the workshop is intended to introduce attendees afresh to their enterprises, allowing them to see their products and services through their customers’ eyes. Julia outlines the skills she hopes to impart during the intense workshop period:
“Everyone will finish up armed with 20 distinct ways of encouraging and enabling genuine innovation across their organisations, not just in the R&D department. Additionally, they’ll gain illuminating insight into the practices of companies that have pure innovation woven through their DNA like Apple, Google, P&G, and AirBnB.” Attendees will also have the opportunity to achieve IOEE certification, which is widely recognised as the last word in enterprise and entrepreneurial qualifications. Julia said:
“We always get a great mix of executive leaders from big corporations, as well as the founders of small, agile companies, and academics from the field of innovation and entrepreneurial endeavour. It’s a fantastic cross-section.”
Everyone has the capacity to boost their levels of innovation, both as individuals and within the cultures they’re part of, as Julia explains:
“Innovators are not born, they are made. People can learn how to enhance their creative confidence, how to adopt a mindset of collaboration and experimentation, and how to apply these to their future challenges, both in their personal lives and in their work.”
How do you innovate? Do you create innovation spaces or time periods to give people the right inspirational environment? Or, do you recruit outside forces to bring fresh thinking to your processes, products or markets? Let us know all your favourite tricks and techniques for making innovation part of your work culture and we’ll share your best ideas and the results they’ve achieved with other IOEE members in future newsletters.
Gconsultancy Innovation is inviting IOEE members to take advantage of an exclusive early bird 20% discount on the Design Thinking workshop, which will take place on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th February at Somerset House in London. Learn more about this opportunity and reserve your place here.