We established in the previous blog article that Innovation needs to be done, always. Innovation should be a regular part of the manager’s focus and staff activity in any business. But what is innovation and how can it be applied to your business?

There are typically four main types of innovation that we see in business:

Market Pull Innovation: this is a response to what your customers want. Based on their needs and wants your business can respond and develop the further product offering to meet those needs. This is typically the normal evolution of a products life cycle. We launch with an MVP or minimal Viable Product and then iterate according to customers comments and needs.

Technology Push Innovation: this is when a new product or technology comes on the market that the potential customers do not yet know of or have a need for. This could be a whole new product or an additional feature to an existing product. This becomes a harder sell to customers and often only taken up by the early adaptors within your customer base. But as the technology and benefits get known it turns from a push into a pull and the demand grows.

Frugal Innovation: We have come to see a lot of this in recent times in our own personal lives as well as in business. Frugal innovation addresses how we do more with less. Cutting back on resources such as electricity, water and staff and common across all sectors. The awareness of environmental impact and cost saving all lead to frugal innovation in business.

Marketing Innovation is an interesting one that we follow closely. It is the constant battle for customer attention through marketing. Brands spend huge sums of money with agencies to develop campaigns that will get the initial attention of customers and then try to keep it as long as possible driving this attention to sales. Creative campaigns include great TV and radio adverts together with client engagement activities.

But no matter what type of innovation you do in your business, ensure that it is client focused and moves your business away from any decline or plateau in sales and customer attention.