Simple but powerful ways to make your startup more innovative

Innovation is a word that business owners hear everywhere, and for good reason. Innovation drives businesses forward, enabling their growth and helping them to weather challenging times. 

Innovation doesn’t need to be groundbreaking to be important – it simply means doing something differently to how it’s currently done. 

Innovation can and should come in all shapes and sizes, whether it’s launching a new product, using new technology for maximum efficiency, or generating ideas to better serve your customers.

Small, incremental innovations quickly add up to a more efficient, resilient organization. Unsure where to start? Here are some practical steps you can take to make your startup more innovative.

Build an innovation mindset

Innovation can seem like a very large, abstract concept, evoking images of huge corporations at the forefront of technological advancement. But making your business more innovative is easier than you might think.

For example, technology like Generative AI can create significant time savings for startups. AI tools can sort and prioritize emails, personalize marketing campaigns and analyze vast amounts of data to return specific insights.

Not every technology or solution will work for your startup – and that’s okay. Leaders start the innovation process by adopting the attitude to embrace new ideas and accept change as a certainty. If you’re prepared to make mistakes and recognise that you’ll learn from every experience, you enable yourself and others to start being more innovative.

Look for inspiration in new places

It’s normal to look to others in your industry when searching for inspiration on how to make your startup more innovative. But by doing so, you restrict the ideas you come across. This can perpetuate the cycle of things in a particular sector always being done a certain way.

Instead, consider that every organization is made up of similar fundamental parts. Businesses in a totally different sector or even organizations like charities still need to innovate and meet the needs of the audience they serve.

Challenge yourself to seek out insights and ideas from places where you’d least expect to find them. How are organizations that are thriving in other sectors engaging with their customers? What processes create efficiencies? What do their employees say about working there?

Even if there is nothing you can directly draw from, it can get you inspired to think in a different way and lead you to your next innovative idea.

Stay up to date with customer needs

There is no shortage of new technologies and potential for innovation. This can create choice paralysis, or you might spread yourself too thin by trying to innovate in lots of different areas of your business at once.

One of the best ways to get focused and ensure innovations have an impact is by analyzing your customer data. Customer preferences, behaviors and needs change, so make it part of your routine to dig into your data every few months. 

Customer data is where you’ll identify valuable opportunities to innovate, whether it’s to develop a new product, improve an existing one or reach a brand new market. It’s a great way to not only win points with your existing customers, but expand your reach and gain an edge over your competitors.

Introduce technology to unlock innovation

Introducing new technologies to your startup is innovative in itself. Accounting software to speed up finances, productivity tools for project management and social media schedulers all streamline processes and enable you to focus time and energy on helping your business to thrive.

Beyond that, though, are the opportunities for innovation that upgrading your technology brings with it. If you haven’t yet introduced a cloud storage solution to help your team share and work collaboratively on files, your new productivity tool might not work to its full potential. Get your tech right and watch more opportunities to innovate emerge.

Similarly, a solid technological setup is essential to enable you and your staff to work as creatively and innovatively as possible. Being able to work from anywhere means you can broaden your talent pool and unlock work-life balance to retain your best staff and keep your business ideas flowing. 

Consider powerful and portable devices, and robust security infrastructure to keep your business productive and safe, wherever you or your team are working.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Get inspiration from other entrepreneurs

Sharing ideas is essential to innovation, so it’s valuable to have a network of fellow entrepreneurs who can inspire and help you.

The Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) brings women entrepreneurs together to help them connect with each other, scale their businesses and ultimately succeed. Find out more here.

If you’re looking for advice that’s tailored to your business, you can also book a call with a Startup Tech Advisor here.