INCREMENTAL INNOVATION: STEPPING STONES TO SUCCESS

As a business owner or a leader, you should find granular growth possibilities and enhance performance by innovating products, services, corporate processes, and business models as you create and consistently improve your businesses. Both innovation and growth in the pursuit of corporate stability are necessary for long-term success.

What Do The Executives Say About Innovation?

According to McKinsey Research, there is a significant gap between CEOs' desire to innovate and their ability. Although 84% of executives think that innovation is critical to their growth plan, only 6% are satisfied with their innovation performance. Organizational structures and practices, it claims, are not the answer. Furthermore, while executives recognize the value of innovation, they are frequently dissatisfied and unsure of the problem and how to solve it. 

What is Incremental Innovation?

A sequence of minor improvements and changes to a company's existing products and services that can also include processes and tools referred to as "incremental innovation." In general, these low-cost enhancements help a company stand out from the competitors while also enhancing present goods, services, processes, and tolls. 

These minor adjustments aim to increase its products and services' productivity, performance, efficiency, and user experience (UX). By using incremental innovation, companies can save money and differentiate themselves from competitors.

Businesses can employ incremental innovation to strengthen their market position over time and attract a larger audience to the new and better product features.

GOALS, BENEFITS, AND BEST PRACTICES OF INCREMENTAL INNOVATION

According to Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, the primary driving force behind the release of new products rushed to the market is the rising consumer demand for new products and better results. In reality, new products fail 95 percent of the time. 

By establishing the below three defined goals, incremental innovation can protect against business hazards:

1. Growth of Sales or Profits - Companies may keep their products aligned with current trends, cultural moods, and evolving wants within their market by focusing on modifying the functionality and features of existing products and services.

2. Preserve the Existing Business Models - This method may not offer the same significant returns as other types of innovation. Still, it is a low-risk strategy that reinforces its current position.

3. Create New Business Models To Enhance Existing Models - Incremental innovation has a significant cumulative impact on a company's internal processes and efficiency. This method yields consistent efficiency benefits, allowing you to stabilize existing business models before launching new ones. It also aids in discovering and nurturing fresh ideas used in conjunction with the current business.

Below are the Benefits of Incremental Innovation:

It Reduces Risks: Managers are frequently preoccupied with balancing risks and market share. It is always possible to use an incremental strategy, such as making minor but continual advancements without jeopardizing its budget.

Familiar Products with Upgrades: Consumers are more willing to acquire well-known products with new features. This strategy can help the organization increase its product line while also catering to the tastes of its customers. This can also help keep its cash flow steady as they work on more groundbreaking concepts.

Maintain Your Competitiveness: By keeping top-of-mind in the industry with another update or a new feature, organizations may maintain their market share and current consumers using this incremental innovation strategy. 

Presence in Existing Market: Companies can pitch their ideas for upgrades and unique features into the existing market with less uncertainty and risk, knowing that they'll still be able to provide clients with a high level of accessibility.

Low Budget: An incremental plan will not break the bank because it is cost-effective and allows a company to make tiny improvements without investing significant money.

Best Practices of Incremental Innovation:

Know Your Customers: You won't get far in any business if you don't understand your target market. If your current product does not match your customers' expectations, even a minor update can cost you revenue and client loyalty. Before making any changes, you can undertake surveys, customer feedback, or reviews. As you interact with clients, you'll be able to gather more feedback and learn more about their concerns regarding your products and services. These insights will assist you in determining how to create your models following their desire to enhance the user experience.

Decide Where to Focus: This strategy allows faster outcomes, encouraging more individuals to join the innovation campaign. This momentum has the potential to help eliminate doubts. The difficulty is determining where to concentrate your efforts, as there is always a myriad of incremental innovation ideas.

Collaborate: You may construct predictable pipelines for incremental innovation by spreading the task and making it a collaborative effort. In larger firms, this method is necessary because a single department cannot foster innovation across the entire organization.

Wrap Up: Take Advantage of Incremental Innovation

Incremental innovation refers to a gradual change in a company's products, services, or operations that can take many forms. Incremental innovation is critical to a company's success because it allows it to expand and evolve in response to customer and employee feedback and shifting market conditions. 

Incremental innovation is always a vital component of the most successful businesses. A business culture that encourages continual improvement with low risks is the cornerstone of long-term corporate stability and sustainability.

HUMAN CAPITAL TRENDS: DESIGN THINKING ON CRAFTING EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE (Copy)

With the high technology innovations, employees are now equipped with the constant flood of information. According to Deloitte data, people constantly check their phones more than 8 billion times per day, but productivity is scarcely increasing. HR must use design thinking, which puts the employee experience at the center, to relieve the overburdened employee and develop HR tools to help manage complexity. Design thinking shifts HR's attention away from programs and processes and toward a new goal: creating a productive and meaningful employee experience through compelling, pleasurable, and simple solutions.

The Role of Design Thinking on Employee Experience

Customers' perceptions of your company are shaped by how employees perceive it. Design thinking aids in the creation of an engaging workplace that delights employees in "moments that matter."

Design thinking allows you to focus on the employee's individual experience and build tailored processes. As a result, new tools and solutions have been developed to benefit employee satisfaction, productivity, and enjoyment. HR departments should improve their abilities to include essential design principles like digital design, mobile app design, user experience design, and behavioral economics into their work. Design thinking is valuable and practical. According to this year's poll, respondents at organizations where HR provides the most value are nearly five times more likely than their peers to use design thinking in their initiatives.

What Exactly Does "Employee Experience" Imply?

Employee experience is the total of everything that happens during a career. It begins when an employee applies for a job and ends on their last workday. 

Employee experience involves four crucial stages:

1. Recruitment: This is your first opportunity to showcase your company's culture and build trust with a prospective hire. The total experience is determined by how smooth the application procedure is.

2. Employee Onboarding: Integrating a new employee into a company. While on the job, they acquire a sense of how things will be. The smoother the onboarding process, the better their experience will be.

3. Employee Retention and Development: The candidate contributes to the company's growth and development. They've assimilated into the culture. The experience is influenced by their daily routine, work connections, growth possibilities, learning, etc.

4. Employee Exit: Employees who leave the company until their exit interview are included in this category.

Why Is Employee Engagement So Important Now?

• Engagement of Employees - In the United States, 36 percent of employees are involved in their work and workplace, the same as Gallup's composite proportion of engaged employees in 2020. Around the world, 20% of employees are engaged at work.

• Retention of Employees - In 2021, 74% of actively disengaged workers are actively looking for new work or keeping an eye out for openings. In comparison, 55 percent of disengaged employees and 30 percent of engaged employees are not involved.

• To Attract High-Performing Employees - Companies like Zappos create candidate experiences to attract high-performing employees and make it simple to find and apply for the perfect position.

Companies Design Employee Experience to Attract and Retain High-Performing People

The employee experience is more significant in the employee life cycle. At each point of the life cycle is the journey people take with your organization and their interactions with managers and associates. 

What Can Business Leaders Do?

1. Provide design thinking training and seminars to Human Resources managers.

2. Learn and apply design thinking as used in customer service.

3. Create a prototype, test it, and learn from it.

HR Leaders as Designers

HR leaders can be designers by focusing on people, resulting in a more engaging and effective HR solution. When used appropriately, design thinking is a way of problem-solving that is rigorous and disciplined. It's an opportunity for HR to rethink how it collaborates with the company and its processes while leveraging technology to promote significant employee interactions. 

When done correctly, design thinking creates a virtuous loop that increases employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity for the organization. Talent leaders should ask themselves, given their new role as designers, how can HR build and influence the employee experience? How can HR create holistic experiences that engage employees at every stage of their careers, from prospects to alumni? How can HR assist in developing and reinforcing design talents across the organization?

How Can Design Thinking Help Advance DEI Challenges in 5 Stages?

Today's DEI pieces of training and programs are frequently developed with a one-size-fits-all strategy that focuses on changing the attitudes of others. However, by being more strategic and human-centric, thinking like a designer may help us alter and enhance diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) activities.

Design thinking principles can help us holistically handle today's more complex and interrelated DEI concerns using a five-step road map.

The 5 Stages of the design thinking method as mapped out by Stanford University are the following:

1. Empathize

This is the first stage of design thinking. Typically through user research, you should get a sympathetic grasp of the problem you're trying to solve. This involves research and analysis of the gathered data to understand the company's current DEI state.

Empathy is the starting point for design thinking. People are at the heart of DEI's activities. We must have a thorough awareness of our people's wants and feelings to produce value through DEI efforts. It is essential in a human-centered design approach like design thinking. It helps you put your worldview aside and acquire meaningful insight into consumers and their needs.

2. Define

This is the stage of DEI where the problem is defined. To generate the most authentic and emotionally resonant solutions, we must put our associates at the center of the problem-solving issues. We must have to state and define the critical roadblocks that hinder sustainable progress.

The information acquired while in the Empathize stage is compiled. We then have to analyze the fundamental issues that the company and the team have identified. Problem statements are what they're termed. The proper measures to perform are asking the correct questions, selecting the right indicators, spotting the suitable patterns, and coming up with the correct answer.

3. Ideate

This stage is the time to bring in various viewpoints to identify the root of problems and potential solutions. Because we have a strong foundation of information from the last two phases, we can now begin to "think outside of the box," look for new perspectives on the problem, and develop creative solutions to the problem statement constructed. Brainstorming is especially effective in this situation.

4. Prototype

This stage is to start to create and develop solutions. The goal of this stage, which can be an experimental phase, is to find the best potential answer for each problem encountered. We can deliver a program prototype to test the solution's efficacy and relevancy by knowing which elements work and which don't.

5. Test

We pilot the solution to test results and evaluate the next iterative that expands on the existing components during the test stage.

Always pilot a solution with controllable groups before rolling it out on a big scale to test the results and learn from the experience. We have the opportunity to modify early prototypes into solutions with more promising potential based on the collected feedback and observation.