When you think about startups e entrepreneurshipIt is common for the first feature to emerge is the innovation. But what importance of innovation?
Due to the high level of competition, demand is fundamental for differentiating ideas. Whether through the introduction of new services, products or processes, either through significant improvements in the existing market.
It is increasing the impact of innovation the success of a company, whatever its size. However, many people still feel a little lost at the beginning of his journey entrepreneur and do not understand what the importance of innovation and how you can change the course of your business.
What is innovation?
Innovation is defined as the ability of individuals, companies or even nations to explore ideas of different and successful way adding value to the market, governments and society. That is, the success of a business is not based only on its potential to generate income but also on how your idea generates positive impact on people.
This concept is generally associated with products, but can also occur at the level of technology, processes, services, management and marketing. The important thing is that innovation be used correctly in order to improve efficiency, productivity and business performance.
Creativity vs innovation
It is quite common to confuse creativity and innovation. In fact, these terms are related to each other, but they do not represent the same thing.
Creativity, as the word implies, is the ability to create. It's about enjoying the mind to manage different ideas. Anyone can be creative, whatever the context in which it is inserted. In a business environment, creativity can help in the task management, performance improvement of the working team and the creation of quality products. For example, from the creativity companies can take a flexible and updated position in relation to new technologies that continue to be developed. With this definition in mind, it can be seen that creativity has a weight in importance of innovation.
As we have seen, innovation It is to develop business ideas into something useful and practical for society. In other words, it is the process of converting theory into action. And this is where creativity is distinguished from innovation: the action. To be creative, an individual must be able to present new ideas while, to be innovator, This needs to act on those ideas.
Now a successful entrepreneur needs to have these two strands explored in order to get a business idea.
Types of innovation
Not all innovative ideas They need to be unique and exclusive in the market. There are different levels of innovation: incremental e radical.
Incremental Innovation (or continuity)
This is the most common type of innovation and it is to find ways to improve products, services or processes that already exist in the market. Here, the solutions are not created from scratch but by introducing small changes to existing ones, focusing on aspects that enhance its value.
A innovation Continuity brings less risk to the entrepreneur, however, requires a strategic approach and aimed to ensure that these changes are valued by customers. A good method to get opportunities innovation incremental is conduct a search together customers, identifying what they value most in their products or services and what aspects is that they would like to see improved.
Innovation radical (or breakthrough)
In this type of innovation It gives the breach of fundamental principles already adopted in the market for the creation of entirely new markets and industries. That is, a product, service or process never seen before is built from scratch and placed on the market in order to completely replace the previous solutions or responding to a necessity where there was a solution.
A innovation Disruptive brings several advantages to an entrepreneur, which highlights its unique participation in a new market leaving its pioneering brand, a considerable increase in profit of the business and its ability to innovate continuously. However, this type of innovation is the most difficult, time-consuming and usually involves a greater financial investment.
Benefits of innovation
A innovation It is very important because it is the only way to stand out among the competition. The current practice of innovation It is related to the longevity of the business, ie when a company ceases to worry about this aspect, it is overtaken by competition and therefore runs the risk of failing.
The customer acquisition owes much to their perception of value of what they are presented. Customers buy or adhere to a product that present certain benefits, whether best features beyond those competitors are alternatives with lower price.
Here are some of the main advantages that any startup can get to include the innovation in your business idea:
Competitive advantage
Innovate it allows an advantage over the competition and helps companies to become and, consequently, remain, market leaders in which they operate. Many companies manage to go through the demanding path that is to conquer a new market through their product. However, they then find it extremely difficult to keep pace with the competition. This is because, generally, a good idea leads to a thousand followers. It is essential that an entrepreneur keeps up to date and considering the next steps to take.
More efficiency and productivity
A innovation It allows the business to take place due to the demand for greater efficiency and productivity. That is, with the entrepreneur focused on finding a completely new solution or to improve existing solutions, will eventually have greater ease in solving problems and challenges. By having an organized and focused mind will work more efficiently and productivity will be higher.
Competition with larger companies
Finally, another advantage of innovation is that you can put your business at the same level in which they are major companies and well established in the market. It only takes one innovative idea to shake with the market and consequently cause some tension with big name companies.
An innovative idea is essential to creating a successful startup. This allows offering value to potential customers through a solution to a need like this, be it an improved version or a totally new one. In addition, it is identified as one of the main selection criteria startups aid programs. Thus, once again it is possible to identify the importance of innovation in a company's success.
As important as the idea and its degree of innovation it is the ability of the entrepreneur to execute it in the best possible way. In other words, the first determinant steps for success are in fact the idea and understanding the importance of innovation. However, it must be accompanied by a business model, strategic planning, setting goals and deadlines, tools, without ever forgetting commitment and determination.
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