11. Dare to invent the future.
This is my favorite quote from Thomas Sankara. For every enterprise, innovation is key to maintaining and growing market share. It is first and foremost mindset: believing that you can invent something that your clients, your competitors and the environment have never seen before. Over the last 20 years, STRATEGIES! has invented extraordinary services: a training and facilitation style that integrates African culture and history into state-of-the-art management techniques, “The Management Breakfast” a sales tool which brought together managers of multinationals to discuss the latest trends in their space, EXTRA! which sought to make training available to the smallest Cameroonian enterprises, Local Economic Development (LED) which helped municipalities think and act as investment destinations and much more. All these services it was said could not be done in our market or by us. All of them we did. Some were successful, some failed woefully. Every single time we learned and became more intelligent as an organization. Dare to invent the future.
12. Innovation must add value.
There is danger in the magic word of innovation. Staff may have the tendency to want to change logos, vary company colors, and introduce fantastic font styles all in the name of innovation. While it is important to pay attention to new ideas, no matter how farfetched they may seem, it is also important to decide which ideas are worth investing time and money in. Innovation has a unique objective, to add value to the company. It must make the product or service smarter and easier to use for the client, reduce costs and therefore profit margins, enhance company positioning in the market… something. Get your employees used to the idea that innovation must add value, this will guide their creative processes and benefit the company.
13. Innovation requires space and methodology.
Do not just preach innovation and expect employees to come up with brilliant ideas. To be a truly innovative company, you must invest in it. Many companies, of course, have entire research and development departments. However, even a tiny SME can hire an innovation officer, can set aside specific time for specific staff or for all staff for innovation. It is also important to realize that innovation requires methodology. People think outside the box better in settings which are not the day-to-day office. Tools for brainstorming and thinking through situations are necessary. A facilitator, internal or external, may be needed for group innovation. At STRATEGIES! we have held an annual strategic retreat for the last 20 years. This has been the best source of ideas for the company. We generally go away for 3-4 days in a place where we can lose ourselves in nature. The boundaries of our boxes seem to fall away and we always generate fabulous ideas. However, we have also created a culture where brainstorming is key and where colleagues are called in for “think” sessions on a daily basis.
STRATEGIES! Team at the 2016 Annual Strategic Retreat at La Vallée de Bana
14. Innovation is also a process.
Brilliant ideas are not always sitting around waiting for first brainstorming session so they can materialize. It is important to take the time not only to generate amazing ideas, but to work through them and develop them until they truly add value to the company. Sometimes we come up with brilliant ideas that are unworkable. Sometimes we think this is something we all know and have seen before, but we find a new way of looking at it. Sometimes we spend months on an idea that never takes off. All times, we learn. Innovation is work.
15. Look up and out.
We must be careful in our companies not to develop tunnel vision. We are so consumed by our market, our products, our clients, our processes that sometimes we miss what is happening in the environment around us that can affect the way we do business. It is important to keep an eye on the environment, not only with regular news briefs, but by inviting in resource persons who may have a completely different perspective from ours. Working sessions on how a change in the environment will affect business are helpful for coming up with strategies that enable us to adapt and seize opportunities. Regularly collecting information from our clients is also part of the look up and out process. Let us remember not to be so in love with ourselves that we forget whom we exist to serve. The customer.
