Are you missing opportunities by not prioritising innovation?

Prioritising innovation

Maybe your industry is becoming increasingly digitised, or perhaps there’s a new trend that your customers are moving towards. Staying on top of your sector means prioritising innovation.

But doing so takes commitment. Markets and customer needs are always changing, so your business model needs to adapt in order to keep pace.

This is easier said than done. Here are a few ways that companies can keep their fingers on the proverbial pulse of innovation.

How can I prevent my organisation from missing out on opportunities?

To prevent missing out on new opportunities for growth and future value generation, you must first identify and then adapt to the changes you see. That can mean anything from an incremental shift in your current business model to even completely altering how you operate.

This will allow your business to branch out and find its way into new territories and create more long-term value. By contrast, a company focusing too heavily on its current products and services is not prioritising innovation.

A good example of a company identifying and seizing opportunities is Elmhurst. After nearly 100 years of dairy milk production, Elmhurst decided to shift its business model to nut-based milk in 2017. Elmhurst went all-in on the plant-based market, producing milk in a more sustainable way and addressing its customers’ needs in a way others couldn’t. Today, Elmhurst is the fastest growing plant-based “dairy” company in the US.

(Interested in this case? Read more about it in our book Business Model Shifts).

How can I recognise these opportunities?

Finding new opportunities starts with looking outside. The more often and more thoroughly you look, the more you see — and the better you understand how the world around you is changing and how that impacts your business. This helps you to develop a strong point of view and enables you to quickly anticipate new opportunities.

Think of finding opportunities as like buying a house. You first need to envisage how you want to live, how you want to shape your life, and what role your future house has in this. And instead of buying the first house you see, you list the features and price range and narrow it down.

Trend and innovation hunting works in exactly the same way. Uncovering new opportunities means developing a ‘search’ mindset and the right lens. Once that’s established, you can begin to identify your value spaces and strategic choices.

This will help you understand your current business and assets, enable you to adapt them to your customers’ changing needs, and work towards developing new business model options.

When one door closes, another door opens

Trends will always change and technology will always advance. But if you’ve embraced the ‘search’ part of your business, you’ll always remain relevant — if you’re looking for new routes to take and new value to provide.

Building your search capabilities will enable you to deeply understand how these changes impact your customers, what they are doing and how they’re acting. It helps you to determine the most pertinent trends and will help you plan ahead and futureproof your business.

The first step is finding the necessity. The second step is to act on it. The last and most important step is to have concrete solutions and strategies to innovate.

Here at BMI our mission is to help you look ahead, find those big opportunities and pinpoint how your business should move forward — helping you create new value for your customers and stay relevant in the future.

Do you want to develop a fresh approach to finding new opportunities? Reach out to find out how we can accomplish that together.

Originally published at https://www.businessmodelsinc.com on February 3, 2021.