The gravity of business growth is shifting from capital to creativity, and in this, the market belongs to the most vigorous innovator.
In this context, here is an assessment on the challenges and priorities for the business community in the innovation economy.
What is the emerging trend and how should businesses evolve?
Innovation economy is that which is light on assets and heavy on knowledge.
Data is overtaking experience in making decisions and directing strategy.
ML (Machine Learning), IoT (Internet of Things), and blockchain are becoming vital for producing innovations.
Businesses will have to be equipped with the tools for acquiring, analyzing and applying data intelligence.
Skilling every employee to work in a highly automated environment is also essential.
The innovation economy takes away security from businesses.
But it offers unprecedented rewards in the form of lightning-fast growth and great market dominance.
In the innovation economy, an unconventional and risk-taking mindset is the key to business leadership.
It is also essential to break away from the business models that cannot keep up with the market’s evolution.
A modern business leader must have a strategy to reinvent even a successful business.
The first-mover advantage (gained by a company from being the first to establish itself in a given market) is brief.
This is because capital and technology are now easily accessible to anyone.
So it is much easier to imitate and enhance a successful product in the new economy than it used to be.
Therefore, besides being quick with innovations, companies also have to continuously listen to the user and upgrade products frequently.
The main feature of innovation in the new economy is the delivery of total solution to the customer.
Aggregation and intermediation are central to innovation and delivering convenience, efficiency and economy to the customer.
Innovation, in this context, is more of a collaborative venture.
Business leaders have to persuade investors, employees, suppliers, customers and even regulators to back disruptive innovations.
Regulators are increasingly playing a critical role in bringing innovations to market.
Bringing an innovation to customers can take a lot of money and work hours without any guarantees of returns.
Business heads thus need to be determined and resilient, and they have to keep betting on crazy ideas.
It also requires them to be in touch with the ground realities as innovation is often a bottom-up process.
Maintaining direct communication with customer-facing employees is essential to ensure that middle management does not block either information or ideas.
Leaders of conventional businesses face the challenge of insuring the future with innovations while preserving existing revenues.
One way of preserving a successful business and reinventing it at the same time is to sandbox innovations.
[A parallel organisation may be set up to experiment with disruptive products and models.
If the alternate venture succeeds in taking the market away from conventional competitors, the mother company could be absorbed in it.]
