Innovation is the powerhouse for an entrepreneur, it plays a critical role in entrepreneurship. The ability to develop new ideas, strategies and systems as an entrepreneur in an everchanging world gives progress to the business.
Innovativeness to an entrepreneur is an indispensable quality. An entrepreneur should be able to creatively churn out new ideas to suit the demands of the time he/she is in. This is the key to sustaining relevance as an entrepreneur.
In this article, we will highlight some of the ways to improve your innovations as an entrepreneur.
5 Ways to Improve Innovation as an Entrepreneur
The most effective manner of improving innovatively as an entrepreneur is continuous learning. “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”– Peter F. Drucker
Learning helps you know new customers’ expectations, helps you understand new methods applied in the business and helps you improve on your capacity in your service delivery.
Here are some of the ways you can improve innovation as an entrepreneur.
Carry Out Market Research
Market research helps you understand your customers because it is expected of you to reach out to customers and statistically evaluate their likes, dislikes, desires and expectations. This in turn helps you know where to channel your energy. Market research helps prevent you from making the mistake of trial and error approach to research and development.
With information gotten from the market research, an entrepreneur is expected to initiate new ideas, this is one of the most effective ways to improve innovation as an entrepreneur.
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Undertake New Courses
Getting information is an intentional process. Any entrepreneur who is interested in improving innovatively must have a knack for getting informed, and one of the ways to get informed is to take new courses either offline or online.
Undertaking some of these courses involve you going to seminars, events or attending a conventional school. It could also be via online tools like Edx, Coursera, Udemy, etc.
Undertaking new courses help you broaden the horizon of your knowledge and inject new ideas into your business.
Hire Creative Individuals
Steve Jobs once said “innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about the money, it’s about the people, how you’re led and how much you get it”
Building your creativity threshold as a company is not solely dependent on the owner of the business, it revolves around the workers, from the least to the greatest. Your innovative niche as an entrepreneur is helped by hiring workers with a similar creative drive.
With such, it’s like you’re swimming in a pool of ideas. However, not all ideas are great ideas. This is crucial to innovation as an entrepreneur.
Keep Tabs on Competition
For many businesses, this has been their primary source of innovation- adopting successful policies of rival businesses. As this should not be the only motive for innovation as an entrepreneur, living in a bubble with regards to your business competition is a suicidal attempt.
It is important to comparatively analyze other products and your product to decipher what is the selling point of a rival and how well you can compete against that selling point. This helps you innovate new products for your company that can help improve your market share.
Explore the World
Take a trip, step out of your comfort zone and explore your world. Exploration introduces you to new things and new things are inspiring. This helps to improve your knowledge concerning different cultures and behavioural patterns.
This way, you as an entrepreneur are able to utilize your new understanding of people to innovate product and services that are marketable to them. This is an innovate method of improving your innovation as an entrepreneur.
Conclusion
Improving innovation as an entrepreneur is a solid task that should be considered seriously, for any entrepreneur on the growth trail. Improvement in product and service is compulsory, thus innovation should not be approached light-heartedly.
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