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The Customer is Key | Stay Ahead of the Pack | Is Social Environment Encouraging Innovation in your Company? | Improving Competitiveness through Innovation | Productivity Gains from Smarter Workplaces and Processes | Recruiting Employees and Fostering Attitudes and Behaviours for Innovation |  | . |
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Innovation is a Process – Not a “Thing”
Innovation is a process - not a "thing”. It is made up of many components that have to work together in order for a company to be truly innovative.
A company must have the right mix of creativity and formalized structure, one without the other will not be successful in the long term.
Do you want to enhance your innovation process and become more competitive?
If so, there are 9 components that are present in leading innovative companies that you can implement to increase your competitiveness in the food processing industry.
Nine Components of the Innovation Process:
- Support - Senior management must encourage and support corporate innovation.
- Resources - Allocate dedicated resources (human and financial) to pursue innovation. A company must have the ability to adjust these resources according to the innovation need.
- Leadership Training – Strong leaders are not always born, they need training and development to lead the way to innovation.
- Organizational Structure – Create a flat and flexible organizational structure able to quickly respond to market opportunities. Connect all areas of the company enabling them to break out of information “silos” and work together. Utilize customer segmentation, brand segmentation, or whatever method best meets corporate goals.
- Corporate Goals - The goals and objectives surrounding innovation must be clear and understood by employees.
- Communication – Institute a corporate expectation of collaboration between business units to ensure that all employees that need to know what is going on are “in the know”.
- Technology - Implement technology to allow employees to gather and share intelligence.
- Allow Creative People to be Creative – Offer flexible hours, compressed work, modified hours, etc. Where possible, create the environment that is conducive to employees’ unique needs to enhance innovation.
- Evaluate the Process – Evaluate the innovation process on a regular basis. Is the processing working? Where are the dysfunctional areas? What can you do to improve? Just because the same process has been used for 10 years does not mean it is the most effective.
115 kb pdf document "Innovation is a Process" | | .
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The Customer is Key in the Innovation Process
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Without being in tune with consumer demand, no business will be commercially successful in the long-term. Every business must be aware of consumer demand and have an established plan to determine how it will assess and meet consumer demand.
Do you want to ensure that your company remains competitive and better meets customer demand?
If so, there are several simple methods you can use that will assist in increasing your competitiveness in the food processing industry.
Try some of these techniques used by leading innovative companies and better meet the needs of your customers!
Five Ways to Better Understand Your Customer:
- Research - Do you know your customer’s product preferences - what do they like, what don’t they like, who are they? Invest in consumer and market research to find out more about your customers and how to better meet their needs.
- Unmet Needs - Determine if there are unmet customer needs that you could fulfill, could it be niche product improvements, new products? What is it that the consumer wants?
- Focus Groups - Interact with consumers – conduct focus groups - find out if consumers are happy with your products and what you could do to improve them. Listen to what consumers have to say and act upon their feedback. This results in insights that tell you where the innovation opportunities are and how to better serve and communicate with consumers.
- Social Media – Becoming a more and more popular method of communication. Utilize social media to elicit customer feedback – blogs, Facebook, etc. Use whichever method is the most effective to reach your target market(s). Think “outside the box”.
- Contact Method - Implement a method whereby your customers can easily contact you to provide feedback and ask questions. Some may be more computer savvy than others. Ensure that you have provided them with a feedback mechanism that meets their unique needs so that you can determine what their satisfaction level is with your products and how you can improve. Make it easy for consumers to contact you.
Printable 41 k pdf document "The Customer is Key in the Innovation Process"
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Stay Ahead of the Pack
Help your company become more innovative. Do you want to ensure that your company remains competitive and becomes more innovative? The leadership of a company sets the tone for how employees perceive their role in innovation and ultimately how successfully the innovation process functions.
There are several simple actions you can take and principles that you can follow that will assist in increasing your competitiveness in the food processing industry.
Leadership is the most critical component in encouraging innovation.
Examples of how leaders can influence and enhance the innovation process follow. Try some of these techniques used by leading innovative companies and move your company to the head of the pack!
Nine Points To Enhance Innovation Leadership:
- Include Innovation in Company Strategy - This makes it clear to employees that innovation is a key corporate focus.
- Recognize - that the corporate success of the company is dependent upon its skilled and motivated employees.
- Empower – Ensure that every employee is empowered to take a role in the innovation process regardless of seniority or position.
- Support Training & Development - Support training and development so that employees are aware of leading edge technology and practices that can enhance their work. Better skilled employees are better able to produce innovative products.
- Support & Reward Innovation – This can be accomplished through incentive programs, performance-based compensation, bonuses and promotions.
- Implement Succession Planning – If a highly knowledgeable employee leaves the company it is critical that the knowledge does not leave with them. Ensure that a succession plan is in place and another employee is being coached and mentored to step in when this employee leaves.
- Take Calculated Risks - Encourage employees to take calculated risks without fear of failure. Ensure that employees aren’t punished for failure when an innovative idea isn’t successful. This will encourage employees to think more creatively and ultimately result in greater innovation. Employees need to feel comfortable in taking risks.
- Encourage Freedom to Disagree – Ensure employees feel safe to voice their opinions even when they differ from the leadership. By speaking up employees may save the company from an innovation failure. Fear stifles the innovation process.
- Encourage Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo – While you may currently be achieving great success, if you don’t change and grow you won’t be able to maintain commercial success in the long term. Encouraging employees to be dissatisfied with the status quo will help an organization become more innovative.
33 kb pdf document "Stay Ahead of the Pack" | |  |
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Social Environment - Is it Encouraging Innovation in your Company?
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The social environment of a company plays a critical role in shaping how employees interact with one another and how they perform their duties.
This environment can have either a positive or negative impact on enhancing innovation.
Leaders must be cognizant of the environment that they create for their company, including the social environment.
Do you want to enhance your company’s social environment to accelerate innovation?
If so, there are seven ways that leading innovative companies use to improve the social environment in their companies. Use these methods to help improve your competitiveness in the food processing industry.
7 Ways to Create a Positive Work Environment to Enhance Innovation:
Corporate Values - Establish corporate values to tell employees what the company believes in and how they are expected to behave. Include values such as: respect, honesty, accountability, trust, and dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Value your Employees - Ask employees for their opinions about products and services and act upon their suggestions where appropriate. They may have an idea for a successful new product or service.
Employee Recognition - Whether formal or informal, recognize employees for their contributions to the company through methods that are meaningful to the individual.
Work Life Balance - Allow employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Companies pay a steep price when employees are overworked, stressed and unhappy.
Physical Space - Create a physical space where there is a common area for people to gather to encourage collaboration and networking. Create a place where people can “bump into one another”. Use openness and light. Create an open office environment where employees can see each other, this allows for greater ease of collaboration. Ensure employees have suitable and comfortable furnishings. When people are comfortable it is easier for them to be more creative and innovative.
Internal Surveys - Conduct internal polls on employee engagement to allow employees to voice their level of satisfaction with the company. As well, allow opportunities for employee feedback on a regular basis. Ensure that you listen to the feedback and act upon improving the social environment. | | |
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Improving Competitiveness through Innovation – Jean Rene Haldé
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Halde stated that productivity is related to innovation. Canada’s productivity has been growing much slower than that of the US, just a little better than half the US pace since 1989. Contributing to Canada’s lagging productivity is an underinvestment in early and late stage business. The US invests an average of $5.78 million per company in early stage business while Canada invests $3.3 million. The US invests an average of $11.5 million per company in later stage business while Canada invests $4.1 million. In addition to making greater investments, following are some of the practices and philosophies of innovative companies that Haldé noted that can assist Alberta food processors to become more innovative.
Practices and Philosophies of Innovative Companies
Innovative companies see innovation at the core of their business strategy
Innovation is “all about leadership”
Create a corporate culture that values innovation and permits reasonable risk-taking allowing employees to “fail safely”
Identify an unarticulated need
Offer a niche product or service
Listen to customers and employees
Halde indicated that there are two types of innovation: “Radical” and “Incremental”:
Radical Innovation – focuses on new technologies, new business models and breakthrough businesses. Halde noted the Blackberry as an example of radical innovation.
Incremental Innovation - seeks to improve the systems that already exist. The key to incremental innovation is that it has to be continual, a day-in, day-out search for small improvements in serving customers, filling an empty product niche or putting an existing technology to a new use. Halde noted Cirque du Soleil as an example of incremental innovation.
Although radical innovations are important, incremental innovations can make a big difference in how well a business succeeds. Halde said that Canadian firms do too little of this, investing about $900 less/employee for IT equipment than their US counterparts.
3 D’s of Innovation: |
| Decide - | Make innovation your competitive edge |
| Discover - | Discover your customer’s needs. |
| Do - | Execute the plan |
Parting Thought: “Think big, act small, fail fast, learn rapidly”. | | . Improving Corporate Productivity and Innovation Conference 2011
The Improving Corporate Productivity and Innovation Conference 2011 held on February 23-24 was sponsored by the Conference Board of Canada and McGill University. There were many speakers of note who contributed ideas regarding how companies can become more productive and innovative. This is the first in a 4-part series focusing on key messages from these presentations that can benefit Alberta food processors. The first installment is based on a presentation by Jean-Rene Haldé, President and CEO, Business Development Bank of Canada. |
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Productivity Gains from Smarter Workplaces and Processes - Raymond Leduc
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Leduc shared his experience on some of the practices and philosophies which have fostered innovation at IBM Canada in Bromont, Quebec. These practices and philosophies can be adopted by Alberta food processors to become more innovative.
Practices and Philosophies of IBM Bromont Manufacturing
Ensure that all employees understand the corporate strategy
Understand the marketplace
Encourage teamwork - have employees work together on a common project – i.e. engineering and HR – team-based decision making
Ensure that all levels of management are on the floor regularly
Meet with managers to ensure that they receive required resources (financial and human)
Implement project management discipline
Project Reviews - Leduc conducts project reviews with senior managers 2/week – he looks at the current state, future state and how to get there - he meets with 80 teams/year IT, manufacturing, facilities, etc.
Training - invests heavily in employee training
Employee Recognition (Leduc thanks a different employee every day for doing something specific for the company)
Innovation Drivers
Lean/continuous improvement practices, constant control and visual monitoring of key performance indicators with a key emphasis on time
Competent, well informed employees in empowered teams
Parting Thought: “Culture is not part of the game, it is the game”
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Improving Corporate Productivity and Innovation Conference 2011
The Improving Corporate Productivity and Innovation Conference 2011 held on February 23-24 was sponsored by the Conference Board of Canada and McGill University. There were many speakers of note who contributed ideas regarding how companies can become more productive and innovative that can benefit Alberta food processors. This is the second in a 4-part series on improving corporate productivity and innovation based on the Improving Corporate Productivity and Innovation Conference 2011. This installment is adapted from a presentation by Raymond Leduc, Director, Bromont Manufacturing, IBM Canada, Bromont, Quebec. |
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Recruiting Employees and Fostering Attitudes and Behaviours for Innovation - Eric Gales
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What words come to your mind when thinking of the word “risk”? When Gales posed this question to the audience the responses were “fear”, “failure” “loss”, all negative associations. Gales said that when he poses this question to audiences in the US and Europe the responses are balanced between positive and negative, whereas in Canada the responses have a negative connotation. Gales feels that this negative view of risk contributes to Canada lagging behind the US in terms of innovation. Canadians need to become less risk-averse. Gales noted that successful people are typically positive about risk-taking and shared the following views on recruiting and fostering an environment that encourages innovation.
Practices and Philosophies that Foster Innovation
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
Leadership is about change and encouraging change in the organization
Innovation is about creating and taking risks
Risk management and risk aversion are not the same
Need to view risk as being positive, not negative
Encourage “qualified sensible risk taking” – this needs to come from the top down
Offer employee rewards and recognition for risk-taking
Failure is how people learn. Good decisions are based on experience and experience is based on failure – if you learn
Employees should not be punished for failure – but encourage employees to always look for a better way to do things
Creating an environment where employees have to “prove it” stifles innovation
Characteristics of people that Gales hires – people with high IQ, lots of energy, tenacity and confidence
Parting Thought: “If we don’t risk and learn we become stagnant”  | | .
Improving Corporate Productivity and Innovation Conference 2011
The Improving Corporate Productivity and Innovation Conference 2011 held on February 23-24 was sponsored by the Conference Board of Canada and McGill University. There were many speakers of note who contributed ideas regarding how companies can become more productive and innovative. This is the third in a 4-part series focusing on key messages from these presentations that can benefit Alberta food processors. This installment is based on a presentation by Eric Gales, President, Microsoft Canada. |
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