What characterizes the digital age, you ask? The first thing that pops into my brain is rapid advancements and, secondly, disruptive innovation leadership. Based on last week’s post, it’s clear that organizations must embrace innovation as a core value or strategic imperative to help stay ahead of the curve.
This week’s post explores how businesses can further foster a “culture of innovation,” leverage emerging technologies and embrace forward-thinking strategies. By doing so, orgs can better navigate the business landscape with digital agility and creativity to help unlock new opportunities and maintain a competitive edge.
Before We Begin
Since this topic covers a lot, I’m switching to bulleted examples. The examples are first (solid/black bullet points), and the tip(s) follow (hollow/white bullet points). Let me know in the comments if you prefer this format or have suggestions.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Let’s face it: it’s a marathon to stay ahead of any curve.
The kicker is that some of us are expected to trend spot and stay updated on almost everything in our respective industries!
If we could all do that effectively, we’d be in pretty good shape as a species. We could also be more intentional in how we use technology for good, but I digress.
If you’re one of those humans, rest assured that you’re in the right place, not alone, and have found a virtual community. Welcome! It’s genuinely a never-ending pursuit. : )
P.S. If you haven’t already, click below to subscribe to email updates (for new blog posts and/or my soon-to-be newsletter)!
Now, let’s get to it!
Examples & Tips to Stay Ahead of the Curve
1. Foster a Culture of Innovation, Company-wide
- Encourage Idea Generation: Create platforms for employees to share ideas, collaborate, and contribute to digital innovation.
- If you don’t know how to do this, hire a Citizen Developer (more on that later)!
- Embrace Risk-Taking: This isn’t a “move fast and break things” motto. I’m talking about fostering an environment where calculated risks are encouraged and failure is seen as a learning opportunity.
- If you don’t know where to begin with this, ask yourself, “When did we stop letting this (as in the previous sentence) happen?”
- Empower Employees: Provide resources, autonomy, and support to employees to explore new ideas and take ownership of innovation.
- We’re all adults with hopes and dreams — help someone advance their career if they show this kind of initiative.
2. Embrace Emerging Technologies
- Stay Informed: Stay abreast of emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and blockchain, and explore their potential applications in your industry.
- Add calendar reminders with links to (re)sources and stick with them. Consistency is a virtue!
- Experiment and Pilot: Conduct small-scale experiments and pilots to test the feasibility and impact of emerging technologies in your business context.
- If you do this, make sure it gets associated with a project and it’s something you truly want to investigate. Otherwise, you could face new problems (cybersecurity issues, company culture snafus, missing data, privacy concerns, missed marketing opportunities, lackluster accessibility options, and more).
- Collaborate with Startups: Partner with startups and technology disruptors to gain fresh perspectives and access to cutting-edge solutions.
- Networking is great; unexpected opportunities can pop up when you least expect them from the most random places!
3. Customer-Centric Digital Innovation
- Understand Customer Needs: Invest in customer research and insights to deeply understand their pain points, preferences, and aspirations.
- If you don’t know how to approach this, keep reading!
- Co-Creation: Involve customers in innovation through co-creation sessions, feedback loops, and user testing.
- This typically involves cross-functional communication and a few key roles (Digital Transformation Expert, Citizen Developers, Technical Project Managers, and Digital Business Analysts).
- Continuous Improvement: Regularly gather customer feedback and iterate on your innovations or innovation process models to ensure they align with evolving customer expectations.
- Lastly, create feedback loops with the help of Digital Transformation Experts and Digital Business Analysts to get things moving.
4. Embrace Open Innovation in the Digital Age
- Collaborate with Ecosystem Partners: Seek collaborations with external partners, customers, suppliers, academia, and SMEs to foster a collaborative innovation ecosystem.
- Recruit help from digital marketing SMEs on how to do this effectively.
- Open Data and APIs: Embrace open data and provide APIs to encourage external developers and partners to create innovative strategies and solutions on your platform.
- I would suggest hiring a Technical Project Manager for this. However, please pay special attention to my 3 pro tips near the end of this article.
- Participate in Innovation Networks: Join innovation networks, industry associations, and consortiums to exchange knowledge, share best practices, and explore collaborative opportunities.
- This is pretty self-explanatory. However, if you want a suggestion, check out the Future Forum, backed by Slack.
5. Agile and Design Thinking
- Agile Methodologies: Embrace agile methodologies to enable iterative and rapid innovation cycles.
- For example, use things like SCRUM, XP or Test-Driven Development (TDD), and Lean.
- Design Thinking Approach: Adopt a design thinking approach to empathize with users, define problem statements, ideate, prototype, and test solutions.
- This is a company-wide feat and also not necessarily departmental. Plus, it kind of doesn’t have to do with design. In short, don’t put all your eggs into one basket, and read this MIT article first.
6. Continuous Learning and Adaptation in the Digital Age
- Promote a Learning Culture: Encourage continuous learning, upskilling, and professional development to equip employees with the latest knowledge and tools.
- Furthermore, remember that you need to invest money to create a learning culture. The same goes for getting employees to upskill, as that won’t happen by itself (and it probably won’t happen if toxic positivity is a component).
- Monitor Trends: Stay updated on industry trends, emerging technologies, and customer behaviors to anticipate demands in the digital age and adapt your digital innovation strategies accordingly.
- Remember when I said to set calendar reminders for tracking emerging technologies? You can do that for this, but instead, include a link to a favorite tool (vs. info source) to help. For example, I’m a fan of Google Trends.
- Pivot and Iterate: Be willing to pivot and iterate on your innovation initiatives based on feedback and market dynamics to ensure relevancy and effectiveness.
- Furthermore, this business muscle needs to be fostered and exercised vs. flexed (from the top down).
If You’re Stuck: 3 Protips to Get Things Moving
First, before trying to implement any of the examples below, have a clear vision and digital strategy. Don’t simply default to IT regarding more technical projects and wanting to expand on internal perspectives. Also, if you have communication roadblocks, consider hiring PMI-certified professionals (like me!) in Citizen Development.
Second, have you had difficulty with cross-functional collaboration in the past? Moreover, if any of it had to do with technology stacks, online collaboration tools, risk management, change management, scalability, or future-proofing, consider looking for a Technical Project Manager who understands citizen development.
Third, you are not alone if you’ve had difficulty becoming data-driven. It’s rough! In addition, if you ever had trouble developing user-centric design capabilities, customer-centricity, or nailing down metrics and KPIs), look into hiring a Digital Business Analyst (who is also familiar with citizen development).
The Takeaway
Innovation is the key to thriving in this digital era. Organizations can position themselves at the forefront of the digital curve. Furthermore, they can foster a culture of innovation by embracing emerging technologies, focusing on customer-centricity, open innovation, continuous learning, and more. Lastly, by staying ahead of the curve, we can drive sustainable growth, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and shape the future of our industries. Overall, stay consistent, diligent, and curious!
