What does innovation success bring.
Cohen, Quinn and Roth (2019) suggest that innovation is critical for survival of firms and supports transformational growth that defends against disruptive rivals. They also reiterate that this muscle of innovation that develops from consistent and superior innovation performance is the strength that a organisation needs. Within this success is eight essentials of innovation and critically two, “aspire” and “choose” are not enough to succeed in a successful pathway. The report supports the idea that there is a string correlation between innovation performance and financial performance. This maybe not enough for some to immediately start innovating but innovation can come in various forms and some would consider innovations as assets, intangibles that cannot be costed.
What are green boxes?
Green boxes according to Cohen, Quinn and Roth (2019) is the value that the company generates from all of its innovations, breakthrough and incremental over a set period of time. The box is green because it represents all of the green shoots and new ideas that the firm will put into it over this period. Unfortunately a green box is not enough to start innovating and being successful. A ‘north star’ vision and aspiration is required more than anything. It is also wise to be cautious over introducing new products as failure can be “costly and embarrassing” (Brown and Martin, cited in HBR’s 10 Must Reads, 2020). The green boxes should also contain things that are not physical, like trust, which can be classed as an innovation if you gain it, when you did not have it before. This attribute is easily lost and won, but built into a strategy at the start and put into a green box, should allow it to have a better value.
Below is the illustration for the targeted growth.
How can I apply innovation to my business?
These numbers and concepts may seem totally irrelevant to SME’s but innovation can be obtained in lots of forms and put in context of your business it might mean something completely different. This is where creating greater efficiency through an IT enhancement (Dirks et al. 2022) is definitely classed as an innovation and can be added to your ‘green box’. HBR’s 10 Must reads (2020) suggests that innovation needs to be led from a “human centred design ethos”. This is really applicable to SME’s as replicating their current processes would breed great innovations with more successful outcomes. This is where it is good to introduce sustainable innovations that can attract a 20-3-% premium
to a consumer (Bland et al. 2022). If you are looking to innovate then get in contact with grow forward who are looking to support the business with innovative growth and the solutions to make this successful.
Bland, R. , Granskog, A. and Naucler,T. (2022) ‘McKinsey sustainability : Accelerating toward net zero : The green business building opportunity’. Available at https:// www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/accelerating-toward- net-zero-the-green-business-building-opportunity (Accessed: 18 August 2022).
Cohen,D., Quinn,B., and Roth,E. (2019) McKinsey & Company : The innovation commitment. Available at https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and- corporate-finance/our-insights/the-innovation-commitment Accessed online August 2022
Dirks, J., Arora, C., Campbell, B., Lakshminarayanan, V., and Papadopoulou, S. (2022) McKinsey & Company : The business value of innovation in the cloud. Available at https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-business-value-of-innovation-in-the-cloud Accessed online August 2022
HBR’s 10 Must Reads (2020). On Design Thinking. Boston : Harvard Business Review Press.