Innovate Incessantly

Innovation has powered the advancement of people, civilizations, nations and businesses for ages.  Easily one of the greatest innovations of all time gave rise to the print industry: the Gutenberg press. It not only improved an existing process, but expedited the process of print and democratization of information so remarkably that it is credited for ushering in the Age of Enlightenment. For centuries the printing press had been so influential in business, politics, religion and science that Mark Twain would write, “What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg.”

In the modern age the impact of innovation, comparatively moving at light-speed, is measured in hours and days, not centuries. Digital transformation, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is advancing at a mind-numbing pace. In the print industry, technology advances bring promise of propelling new digital integration, seamless workstreams, marketplace convergence, down-market reach and extreme personalization. 

While advances may be enlightening to some, the delta between the early adopters and the laggards continues to widen. Weighed down by the technical debt and disconnectedness of legacy systems, many print companies are investing precious capital and time in course-correction of their technology strategy. B2B customer expectations of user-experience is increasingly blurred with the B2C ease of online shopping and near real-time availability of order information. Thus, the print service providers who can tightly align with emerging customer expectations will own the future. 

The answer to this growing problem is to establish a new agility within your operation. For organizations to become more agile there must be a catalyst. That catalyst is innovation, which is the fuel that powers the engine of agility. Those who incessantly innovate at key tactical points within the organization, will cultivate a lasting and flourishing business agility. 

Innovation is not an unreachable ideal reserved for the entrepreneurs and engineers. It is, in fact, something you are likely already doing. The easiest way to approach innovation is to holistically apply it both internally to your business systems, and externally to your market solutions.

Internal Innovation: Adopt Efficiencies

Efficiency in business can be simply defined as "doing things right."  As I have advocated through the entire agility series, our industry is in need of improved organizational efficiency. Whether assessing your organizational design, planning inclusively, bridging strategy to execution, or wielding the data sword, the focus has been on creating efficiencies that will stoke new agility.

Contemplate an optimal state business system design: jobs flow seamlessly into your operating system with few preflight exceptions, are routed to the appropriate location, and then queued at the most efficient piece of equipment for production. All the while the customer is monitoring their dashboard progress chart and adjusting expectations and the latest distribution plan based on clear job visibility and trust borne of consistency and accuracy of information. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of variations of this optimal flow where innovative providers have leveraged people, processes, technology and structure to enable the operation to function with increasing automation. That is the efficiency of internal innovation.

Investing, planning and executing on systems improvements will take time. Manage within your resources but create stretch goals that reward your team at defined intervals for systems and process innovations. While the leaders (early adopters) pave the way beyond this optimal state, it is incumbent upon the early and late majority to lean into a plan to accelerate adoption of automation technologies.  In doing so, be realistic with your current state and augment that realism with patience to create an attainable path forward. 

External Innovation: Advocate Effectiveness

Where efficiency is "doing things right," business effectiveness is defined as "doing the right things." The commercialization of products and services requires a large percentage of annual budget. You are introducing change into the organization and customer relationships, which is accompanied by risk. It would be ideal to know that the solutions you bring to market have relevance and can solve customer problems, deliver an ROI, and help scale company growth. At times, innovation can be an inexact science (or art). However, you can mitigate much of the risk through a deliberative approach to external innovation.

To minimize risk focus on these two things:

First, know what your customers want.  There are simple tools like customer surveys, written and conducted by professionals, that will divulge objective results. You want to know what customers think of your current products, new solution ideas, the overall customer experience, and how they rate you in comparison to others. These data points, and others, are easily discoverable and infinitely informative. Capture customer insight, formally and informally, to know how to anticipate the market and guide your innovation efforts.

Second, find your creative high-potentials, that operationally-minded person who is always bringing the latest ideas from the marketplace, and build resources around them. Develop an operational plan for them to identify emerging products, technology and solutions and test them in the marketplace. Modify incentive income so that the customer-facing team will engage the innovation team in expanding current relationships and breathing new life into the dusty prospect list. Insure this effort is augmented with strategic guard rails where the innovation effort is aligned with the company’s vision and mission, the true-north.

Few things will galvanize your customer base and intrigue prospective customers like the bleeding edge of innovation. Assume the risk of misfires, as there surely will be some, and adopt a cultural principle of tolerance for imperfection. Transparently create customer partnerships to forge into the new world of the evolving optimal state. The stakes can be high, but so are your goals and expectations.

I have built several innovation teams throughout the years with great success.  In fact, receiving an annual supplier innovation award from a $800MM client is still a highlight of the incredible innovation team performance I was fortunate enough to lead. If your company is known in the market as an innovator the natural conclusion is that you are a problem-solving organization. Every customer and prospect has problems they need solved. Building inertia behind your innovation efforts, which drives new agility throughout the company and the market, creates new value for the company and the customers you serve. In addition to adding new value, innovation will sustain your organizations ability to be agile. With agility your team can confidently conquer whatever the future holds.