It is rightly said that ‘Improvement is a day by day process’.Once you start the journey, you have to keep evolving as an individual, as a business entity and also as a responsible citizen. There is no saturation point of improvement and you can make each day better than previous one.
As far as adoption of technological advancement and innovation is concerned, it is a cyclical process. So, once you start a business, you can keep adding new things/new strategies/new thoughts or new agendas. Late adoption of technology is one of the cause of continuous losses to once giant companies like Nokia.
Technology can be invented or discovered, so it does not only cover something which is new in actual sense but also covers usage of a traditional technology in modern way. One such example is that some companies have started producing natural oil directly from woods in traditional way and are successfully encashing this opportunity. On the other hand, innovation means adoption of creative strategies. Basically following steps are involved in these process:
1) Recognizing the loophole which adversely affects customer satisfaction/profitability/market potential.
2) Gathering data from similar types of business undertakings about the way in which they are covering the loophole.
3) Making a budget and strategizing whether current market practices fit in the budget.
4) If due to any reason like company’s policies or financial constraints, company is not able to adopt such practice, then inviting suggestions and creative ideas from employees of all levels in the company.
5) Implementation of at least three such shortlisted ideas on trial basis.
6) Finalization of the idea that gave best result among all and then thorough research on the same for next few months.
7) Final implementation with or without modification on full scale.
The above 7-point process may extend to 10, 12 or 100 points depending upon business because business world is dynamic and there is no ‘fit for all’.
It is the entrepreneur who has to take the call and then make all other factors of production work accordingly.
Once all the team members become part of the change, adoption and absorption of new technology and innovative techniques would become easy. So, Strong team building is the key.
By CS Bhavya Taneja