As a founder, you probably stay up all night making up plans on how to make your company relevant for years to come. In the tech space that is ever-changing, you need to take the initiative in order to stay ahead of your competition.
You’ll agree with me that product innovation is essential to a company’s survival. However, a successful product innovation isn’t something that is easily attained. According to McKinsey, 84% of executives agree that innovation is important to their growth strategy, but only 6% are satisfied with their innovation performance.
So, how do you make sure that your innovation strategy yields a better performance than average?
In this post, we are going to give you five tips that’ll help make sure that you’re among the happy 6% of executives.
Are you ready?
Let’s begin.
Tips For A Successful Product Innovation
The five tips that you should have in mind when developing a product innovation strategy are :
- 1. Organize brainstorming sessions
- 2. Obtain the right data from your customers
- 3. Set short-term, midterm and long-term goals
- 4. Make your innovation process an iterative one
- 5. Never stop validating
Organize Brainstorming Sessions
Successful product innovation, most times, isn’t always down to one person. As a founder, you should make sure to surround yourself with experienced persons that buy into the vision of your company.
With this kind of people around you, you can organise brainstorming sessions and come up with brilliant ideas that’ll move your company forward. Brainstorming sessions are important as there’s no limit on the amount of ideas that can be generated – as long as it’s feasible, then it’s good.
During your sessions, you should discuss your present position, vision for the future, your challenges, possible solutions, strategies and so on.
Also, it is important to note that during these sessions, different kinds of ideas will be generated. Some of them might be brilliant but not feasible at the moment. These ideas should be kept for future references as they might serve as sources of inspiration for future innovations.
Obtain The Right Data From Your Customers
For your innovation to be successful, it has to resonate with your customers. This means that you have to be very familiar with your customers.
Undergo research and generate data from your customers that relates to your product. You have to understand your customers pain points, why they choose your products, their customer journey and more.
During your interactions with your customers, you might find out that they really don’t need a disruptive product. All they probably want for a new feature to be added to your app or for you to create a mobile version. While these changes might not be regarded as innovative breakthroughs, these sort of incremental changes can affect your company’s staying power in the market.
Therefore, the more you know your customer, the likelier the chance that your product innovation will be a successful one.
Set Short, Medium And Long Term Goals
Having a product vision is important and you should never lose track of it. It is also advisable to break down this vision into short-term, midterm and long-term goals.
Once you have already decided on what these goals are, it will be easy for you to create tactics and strategize on how to make your grand vision become reality.
This is because you have broken down the entire process into smaller goals and smaller deadlines.
Make Your Innovation Process An Iterative One
This fourth tip is an extension of the previous one. When innovations happen, they usually seem like a singular achievement.
However, most innovations are usually as a result of a process. Taking them on without trying to approach iteratively can lead to problems like project creep or missed deadlines.
The best way to go about innovating your product is to add features incrementally while having the needs of your customers at the back of your mind. You’ve already done your research; make use of the information gotten to decide which features to add and which one should be removed.
Never Stop Validating
Collecting feedback from your customers is an important part of innovation. And it shouldn’t stop just because you already launched a product.
If you want to be able to make your iterative process a successful one, you need to be able to test and prioritize your features. This can only be successful through continuous validation of your product.
You have to collect data from everyone involved with the success of your product : your team and customers. And use this information obtained to assess and modify your innovation process.
Innovation isn’t easy. In fact, it can be a daunting task. However, in order to stay relevant in your industry for years to come, you must cultivate an innovative mindset in your company. These 5 tips can help make sure that’s possible.
