The Importance Of Business Innovation

The late Steve Jobs once said that “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and follower.” There are many reasons why businesses must innovate to survive. Although every organization will have its own priorities, business that choose to not innovate not only lose to their competitors but also risk going out of business. Innovation can be the key factor that differentiations a successful business and unsuccessful one. The main purpose of innovation is not about thinking of new products, rather it involves thinking of new processes of the business to help increase profit and revenue. While it’s not something that business owners and employees need to have top of mind every day, it does help to always be thinking about you can move your

Business must realize that innovation must be part of organizational culture. Businesses also need to understand that in an economic world that changes so frequently, innovation is needed to survive. If the competition changes, then the business has to change to keep up and be able to compete in that market. Innovation isn’t about figuring out the latest and greatest. If fact, slower shifts in business strategy can be every bit as effective as new technology and ground breaking discoveries. Most importantly, innovation is a matter of perspective and process of constant reinvention (Daft, 1978). Companies that continuously adapt and reinvent themselves on a timely basis are better able to take advantage of developing opportunities in fast-paced aggressive markets. Accelerated learning is important for many purposes within an organization, but it is important in new product development where certain teams must respond quickly to fast paced changing technologies and consumer needs. Since scientific and technological breakthroughs are occurring almost on a daily basis and customer needs are changing quickly, organizations are required to learn faster and faster (Daft,

Compressing the amount of time between when marketing campaign is defined and when the produce reaches store shelves is a key strategic objective (Abernathy, William, & Clark, 1985). The business benefits are clear: accelerating the time to market in a repeatable and consistent way allows companies to make profts faster, increase market share, and improve their brand image. Firms look for ways to compress product development time; they find the packaging design and product specification processes to be a challenge (Millson and Wilemon, Eds). For instance, the package labeling and artwork process is often seen as a slow process for making significant improvements in the speed of product development and distribution (Millson and Wilemon, Eds). The packaging process requires input from multiple departments across the organization. When not properly synchronized, managing these inputs is a burden that can delay the time to market of a product. The responsibility for managing packaging design and development activities, which include campaign planning, product specifications, artwork, ingredients labeling, governmental compliance, bar-coding and branding, typically falls outside the control of the packaging function (Abernathy, William, & Clark, 1985). Identifying and addressing the opportunity for compressing product time to market requires a well-coordinated effort that includes all of