![\"Is](\"http:\/\/planfoundations.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Innovation-Lightbulb-Idea.jpg\")
<\/a> If you work mostly alone and haven\u2019t offered a new product or service to your customers in a while, then consider new avenues or new approaches Remember, if you don\u2019t offer something new to your customers, your competitors will. Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing: \u2022 Look for small innovative extensions of what you already do, as opposed to radically new ideas and inventions \u2022 Look at what your closest competitors are doing and see if you can do it better in any way \u2022 Ask some of your customers what they need. But remember: it takes more than one customer to establish a trend. \u2022 Regularly schedule some time to review your business innovation. This can be anywhere from weekly to monthly. You might need a colleague or advisor as a sounding board to obtain more objective feedback. \u2022 Consider a business partnership, strategic alliance or joint venture with another small firm that has unique skill sets. Together, the two of you might be able to offer something more powerful to the market than you can individually. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ![\"Is](\"http:\/\/planfoundations.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Innovative-Team-Meeting.jpg\")
<\/a> If you work with teams, your situation is a little different. A published study by Bledow, Frese, Anderson, Eres, & Farr (2009) analyzed over 150 research studies on innovation and suggested that several factors can contribute to the degree of innovation in organizations.\u00a0 Based on this research, their insights about the characteristics of innovative workplaces include: \u2022 Regular idea generation meetings that focus on idea generation, not idea evaluation. \u2022 Idea exploration\u00a0meetings to explore benefits and risks without managerial involvement. \u2022 Encouraging small incremental innovation rather than radical innovation. \u2022 Hiring people, particularity managers that will encourage improvements and innovation and be comfortable with the ambiguity, unknowns, and challenges therein. \u2022 Making innovation valued enough that it\u2019s part of an employee\u2019s performance criteria and is discussed at review time. \u2022 Supporting an innovative culture by minimizing strict and restrictive rules, guidelines, policies, or norms that get in the way of creativity. \u2022 Rewarding new and successful ideas. \u2022 Encouraging diversity in thinking to lead to greater innovations. \u2022 Practicing \u201cProactive Creativity\u201d \u2013 a work culture method whereby a worker identifies a work-related problem then identifies new ways to solve the problem. This has been successful with production workers at manufacturers and with nurses in healthcare. A fun challenge exists when creating a more innovative workplace. Whether a solo entrepreneur or a large employer, ask yourself what you can do to make your workplace more innovative. By comparing characteristics of innovation between large and small organizations, we see some unique perspectives. For example, both types of organizations benefit from keeping innovations small, natural extensions of existing offerings\u2014as opposed to a radically new invention. Also, small organizations rely more on studying customers and competitors, while the large organizations rely more on cooperating with each other.\u00a0 Either way, there is something that each of us can do to make our workplace more innovative. How about you? \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is Your Workplace Innovative? Whether you\u2019re in a team of 1 or a group of 1,000, an innovative workplace will become important for your business to maintain competitiveness in the long run.\u00a0 An innovative workplace is also a benefit for your employees: it creates a fun and exciting place to work.\u00a0 So If your business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,41,22,4,31,32,43,33,26,27],"tags":[11,17],"class_list":["post-4857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manage-control-delegate-job-description-resource-allocation","category-employees-subcontractors-fte-people-human-resources-new-hire-oranziation","category-innovation","category-lead-leadership-executive-strategy-resource-allocation","category-money-profit-income-funding-loan-debt-equity-bonds-angel-venture-capital","category-operations-efficiency-managing-organize","category-organization-efficiency-delegate-abdicate","category-business-plan","category-sales-marketing-advertising-public-relations","category-start_ups","tag-business-planning","tag-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}