There is no product and / or service without aprocess. In the same way, there is no process without a product or service. The immense technological, demographic, socio-environmental and economic changes that have been experienced in recent years have led many of the graphic products to face a process of substitution by other forms of communication used by companies and by people. These factors, added to the effects of the global financial-economic crisis,

Sometimes it is thought that innovation is triggered from a moment of inspiration, or that only a few lucky ones who have special abilities can do it. However, innovation is achieved in many ways, such as services that can be offered to the client, in the way in which a product is distributed, in the way it relates to other companies (for example, strategic alliances) or in the way of selling a product or service. On the other hand, innovation does not have to be based solely on novel ideas, but also, and more frequently, occurs through the implementation of small improvements in products or processes: continuous improvement.

Many times, the final results are set as an indicator of an innovative company, that is, new products, perhaps because it is what the consumer or customer of the organisation can visualise. However, the activities or processes that must be passed internally to obtain this result are not taken into account. Therefore, innovation must occur as a process because it covers all the company’s operations, that is, this process makes it possible to combine technical, financial, commercial and administrative capabilities and, in turn, allows new and improved market launch. products or processes that make firms more competitive.

The above is reaffirmed in the Oslo Manual, when it states that innovation activities include all scientific, technological, organisational, financial and commercial actions that lead to innovation. Both activities that have produced success are considered, as well as those that are ongoing or those carried out within projects cancelled due to lack of viability, since the latter favour the strengthening of capacities for innovation.

Bear in mind that here at Applied Innovation we have a team of professionals with a unique combination of leadership and experience to prepare your people to adapt to change.

Activities to obtain new knowledge

Therefore, identifying the innovation activities carried out by a sector or that have not yet been discovered takes great importance, since they are the ones that continuously modify the perspectives for the appearance of new industrial activities and the conditions of entry-exit of companies to an industry.

These transformations generate new competition mechanisms among companies that modify the structural conditions of the sector and define and reorient their technological trajectory, because there are different patterns in the propensity to innovate that determines the pace of evolution and economic growth of the sectors of the economy.

The management of innovation as a process

The innovative factor has become a strategic vector that allows the company to improve its competitive position, since its absence produces a serious insufficiency to generate new products and processes. In this sense, organisations must incorporate into their strategy actions aimed at managing the so-called innovation processes, so that they acquire greater capacity for adaptation and, above all, the possibility of anticipating and even causing ruptures that empower them to renew their competitive advantages in a timely manner.

The above is associated with the management that the organisation manages to develop in the face of change (both organisational, environmental, technical or technological), since this causes different effects on the sector and its way of incorporating these processes, and the results obtained will depend of its capacity for innovation, which in turn is due to “the most common sources of information used to innovate, the way in which innovative activities are organised and the way in which organisational, productive and technological skills have been incorporated in innovation processes.

In some firms, innovation is associated with the introduction of a single and single change, while in others, innovations are generated through progressive changes that are finally part of a significant change. But it’s not just about innovating successfully on rare occasions; innovation requires a constant awareness and willingness of the entire organisation, towards achieving greater efficiency that allows it to quickly transfer new ideas to products and services, and distribute them among new customers.

In some sectors and organisations, innovation processes are characterised by their informality, as described by professionals, because they generally do not enrol in planned processes or obey a strategic technology management and innovation, and because it originates in the solution of problems of adaptation of imported technologies, in the response to the needs of customers or in the use of market opportunities.

More specifically, at the organisational level

The organisations that will gain relevance in the future will be those that discover how to harness the enthusiasm and learning capacity of people at all levels of the organisation, and to this is important that the ability to innovate in organisations as part of the knowledge and learning processes is not considered as an individual skill, nor as the sum of a series of individual skills; it must be taken as a social competence shared by social actors who are part of a perhaps large amount of relevant practices.

This is also reaffirmed by West (2002) and Anderson, of Dreu and Nijstad (2004), indicating that the process of generating ideas (creativity) and its implementation (innovation), that is, the use of ideas and suggestions from Employees in the organization, has become a source of competitive advantage.

Nowadays, there is a fast pace for changing in the structure, relationships and processes in the work environments of every business. With our superior change management courses, Applied Innovation is ready to help your organisation adapt to the inevitable changes it’ll be changing. Contact us now for more information about our services and how we can help you achieve your goals adapting to change in your organisation.