Incremental innovation spurs on success

Thursday November 13 2014
thetimes.co.uk/smehub
SUCCESSFUL
MODERN
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
TO
HOW ATE
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INNO
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This is the eleventh in a series of
supplements The Times is publishing in
partnership with Santander to support small
businesses. Each month, in print and online,
we will be exploring the issues affecting
small and medium-sized enterprises.
Words by Carol Lewis,
Carly Chynoweth and Nick Wyke.
Portraits by Maria Spann, Jim Wileman
and Fabio de Paola for The Times
he entrepreneurial
cofounder of Apple, Steve
Jobs, once said: “Innovation
distinguishes between a
leader and a follower.” The
reality, though, as Apple
found, is that you need to
keep on innovating to keep ahead of your
competitors.
Innovation is also the key to business
growth. The Intellectual Property Office’s
annual report on innovation and growth,
published last week, confirms that those
companies that innovate see twice the
growth in employment and sales of
non-innovators. It also reports that
demand for patent searches — the
first stage in the patent application
process — is rising following a period
of decline. In 2013-14 there was a 29 per
cent increase in search and application
requests to the patent office.
As our interviewee Richard Sellwood,
managing director of Anglepoise, says:
“If you can’t compete on innovation you
end up competing on price, and that is
not a winning strategy, particularly for
an SME.” Anglepoise has invigorated its
Incremental
innovation
spurs on
success
Creativity combined
with adaptability is
the key to keeping
ahead of competitors
brand through innovation. “We want to
make sure that we create an environment
that supports innovation . . . part of that is
that we are overstaffing the design team
so that they have 15 per cent of their time
that they can spend creating new ideas,”
Sellwood explains.
As an entrepreneur you need to be
creative not just in terms of products
and services, but also in the way that
your business is structured and operates.
Adaptability is the key to business
survival, although this isn’t a new concept.
Ian Maclean, managing director of
John Smedley, has a photograph of his
great-grandfather with ten bowler-hatted
men standing by Austin 10 cars. The
picture shows the company’s first sales
force. His grandfather, fed up with the
wholesalers, was taking advantage of the
new road infrastructure and ways
of doing business to sell direct to retailers.
He was innovating, 1930s style.
Today Maclean is following suit,
although this time it is to sell direct to
customers via the internet and John
Smedley branded stores. This business
innovation complements product
11
Successful modern
entrepreneurship
1.8%
of the UK’s GDP is invested in R&D
4%
of South Korea’s GDP is invested in R&D
TECHCOMPANYSEARCHES
FORTHENEXTBIGTHING
Name Jamie Turner and
Guy Mucklow
Position Cofounders
Company Postcode Anywhere
Founded 2000
Employees About 50
Growth trajectory “The plan is to
grow from £10 million turnover to
£50 million in five years”
Postcode Anywhere was a website
development business when
founders Mucklow (pictured far left)
and Turner came up with a way to
make their clients’ ecommerce
websites more efficient: a service
that helped customers enter their
address correctly.
Within three years, revenue from
this idea, familiar to anyone who has
entered their postcode online then
used the drop-down box to select
their street address, had outstripped
income from the company’s web
development work. Today the
business handles about ten million
address searches daily.
This might sound like reason to be
cheerful but success comes with an
element of risk, Turner says. “In tech,
the danger comes when you stop
innovating and start trying to protect
what you already have,” he says.
innovation in the form of different
design styles, yarns and colours.
The internet sales have also brought
with them a database of customers
who can form the basis for future
innovation. Maclean plans to ask
them: “What would you like to buy?”
Asking customers to collaborate
via open-source projects could, one
day, eclipse traditional focus groups.
Open innovation, a term coined by
the American Henry Chesbrough,
innovating with the aid of external
ideas, is set to become the business
world’s modus operandi.
Collaboration, with renowned
designers, is another way in which
John Smedley is injecting new ideas
into the business. Collaboration is a
key way of innovating.
Russ Kavanagh, chief executive of
educational platform LearnerVerse,
works with University of Chester
academics who have helped him with
product development in return for a
share of the profits.
Our video interviewee, Charlie
Harry Francis, founder of innovative
food company Lick Me I’m Delicious
(see The Times SME Hub online),
says he has been surprised by how
forthcoming and inspiring academics
have been with help for his
inventions, including edible mist and
glow-in-the-dark ice cream.
More formal collaborations
include mergers, acquisitions and
joint ventures. One of our featured
businesses, Versarien, announced a
joint venture, DV Composites, with
Dimar, an Israeli tungsten carbide
tool manufacturer, as we went to
press. Chief executive Neill Ricketts
explains, in this issue of SME, how
work with academics and acquisition
of complementary companies has
helped his advanced materials
business to grow.
Innovation doesn’t have to be
radical, though. As John Bessant,
professor of innovation and
entrepreneurship at the University
of Exeter, says in our ten-point
guide. “Although radical changes are
the ones which hit the headlines,
the underlying economic evidence
is clear; most innovation is about
doing what you do a little better.
Incremental innovation of this kind
adds up and has the advantage of
being much lower in risk.”
LAMPDESIGNER ISSWITCHED
ONTOTHENEEDFOR CHANGE
Name Richard Sellwood
Position Managing director
Company Anglepoise
Founded 1932
Employees 20
Growth trajectory “We want to
implement a five-year growth plan
aimed at achieving a 500 per cent
increase in turnover”
Anglepoise began as a joint venture
between a spring manufacturing
company, Terry Spring, and the
inventor George Carwardine, who
had created the first in a series of
iconic spring-balance lamps.
The four-spring 1209 proved
popular, and was copied around the
world, but the business soon took the
idea further, adding a three-spring
model to its line up after complaints
from women that their hair kept
getting caught in the top spring.
“It’s become an iconic product,”
Sellwood says, “but that design
wasn’t really improved for the
next 80 years.”
The company went into
decline and in the 1970s the
spring business was sold to a
US company and the now
independent Anglepoise
business stagnated.
“From that point there
was very little innovation.
Products were updated
but there were no real
breakthroughs,” Sellwood
says. The company
had stopped having
fantastic new ideas, and
while its original design
was still famous, the
patent expired and it
was reduced to selling
plastic versions on £1 profit
margins.
“You can create a
world-beating product
but eventually copies will come
on to the market,” Sellwood
says. “If you can’t compete
on innovation you end up
competing on price, and that,” he
says, “is not a winning strategy,
particularly for an SME.”
Things changed ten years
ago when Simon Terry, a
fifth generation Terry, got involved.
“He updated the design and
started returning it to being a
premium brand,” Sellwood says.
“We want to make sure that we
create an environment that supports
innovation . . . part of that involves
overstaffing the design team so they
can spend 15 per cent of their time
creating new ideas.”
But the foundation of the
company’s innovation strategy is
Terry, who has a knack for coming up
with ideas. “Sometimes you just have
people with that creative mind and in
Simon, I believe we have,” Sellwood
says. “When I joined he already had
five or six really innovative ideas . . . so
the challenge for us
now is to ensure the
business can afford
to invest in them and
that the products
and ideas link to the
brand.
“My job is about
creating a team
to turn these
ideas into
reality.”
‘Competing
on price
is not a
winning
strategy’
PUBLISHERTURNSTHEPAGE
ONTRADITIONALREADING
Name Kate Wilson
Position Founder and
managing director
Company Nosy Crow
Founded 2010
Employees 19
Growth trajectory “To grow from
£4 million turnover this financial
year to £5 million in 2015”
Just 12 hours after being fired
from her previous job in
publishing, Wilson knew she
wanted to set up a children’s
publishing company.
Nosy Crow was duly formed
in 2010 and, driven by Wilson’s
stamina and inventiveness, has
grown “faster than the speed of
a bullet” ever since. The company
has won awards for innovation and
Wilson has been invited to talk about
enhanced technology in publishing at
conferences around the world.
Next year it will publish 80 print
and ebooks, and three apps. Children
who read Nosy Crow’s highly
interactive, multimedia apps, such
as Little Red Riding Hood and Jack
and the Beanstalk, don’t follow the
traditional linear path of print
books. Instead they choose their
own animated adventure with
multiple outcomes.
“Publishers have been slower to
embrace the possibilities of creating
“Many tech businesses grow
to a certain stage, start panicking
about competitors and get litigious.
They stop looking forward at the
new things they could do and
start looking backwards at what
competitors are doing and how to
protect what they have already done.
“You need to have enough R&D
capacity to make sure that you
continue to grow and that you don’t
lose that creative spirit.”
Not losing that spirit can be harder
than it sounds given that bigger
businesses need more structure and
processes than a start-up, and this
can reduce people’s willingness to
take risks, Turner says. “It’s about
saying, ‘Guys, some of these ideas will
be duff, some will probably break but
it does not matter, we can manage it.
Don’t stop trying just because you are
scared of the repercussions.’ ”
It is then, of course, up to the
leadership team to stand by this, by
supporting rather than criticising
people who try and fail, he adds.
The company cannot afford not to
try because it has to find the next big
idea. “In the long run, address lookup will probably get commoditised,”
Turner says. He has something else
in mind, though, and plans to launch
a big-data product called Triggar.
“Within five years we expect it to be
responsible for half our revenues.”
enhanced books and only a few of us
are really active in this space,”
Wilson says.
At all costs she is keen to avoid
reading becoming “the most
boring thing a child can do on a
touch-screen device”.
New ideas are tested out
collaboratively at Nosy Crow’s office.
Eventually they are tested on a
younger audience, too. “But it’s often
only by publishing something that
we find out how the market responds
to it,” Wilson admits. “The barrier to
entry in publishing is low, so it can
make sense to publish a new voice or
a new artist and see what the market
makes of it.”
Wilson transitioned from big
company life to start-up relatively
easily. “It has meant operating on
very tight overheads and it’s difficult
to see beyond the detailed stuff. On
the plus side, I am saving the time I
spent on managing up and across.”
Four years in, keeping the balance
between innovation in product and
business organisation is the key to
success, Wilson says.
“We are making structural
changes all the time as the
business grows and we make
decisions about what to have
in-house and what to outsource.
But we stand or fall on the strength
of the product, and no amount
of strategic thinking makes sense
without products that consumers
want to buy.”
start-ups in Britain this year, so far
RAPESEED OILFARMER
PRESSES ONWITHDIVERSITY
thetimes.co.uk/
smehub
Name Jonathan Bell
Position Chief executive
Company Bell & Loxton
Founded 2010
Employees 4.5
Growth trajectory “I expect
turnover to be in the region of
£250,000 in three years”
Bright sparks?
Join our live debate
on innovation at
1pm tomorrow
● Online exclusive. Open
innovation expert Roland
Harwood explains how
entrepreneurs can use
crowd sourcing to grow
their businesses
● Video interview: food
innovator Charlie Harry
Francis talks about
finding the inspiration
to create
glow- in the- dark
ice cream
and edible
mist
CAREERS WEBSITESTEERS
STUDENTSINRIGHTDIRECTION
Name Russ Kavanagh
Position Chief executive
Company LearnerVerse
Founded 2012
Employees 5
Growth trajectory “We have grown
by 100 per cent in the past year
and hope to grow by 50 per cent
next year and the year after”
The careers coach who laughed at
Kavanagh when he said he wanted
to be an astronaut should take a look
at him now, because his business,
LearnerVerse, is taking off. Inspired
by the lack of careers advice available
to students, Kavanagh and some
of his friends, set up LearnerVerse,
which offers online lessons and
on-demand advice.
“What young people need is to
aspire and realise their amibitions
and we hope LearnerVerse, which is
an ‘educational satnav’, will help with
this,” he says.
Kavanagh approached the
patents filed in China in 2012
University of Chester for help
with finance. Two years later his
company is based at the university
and is growing in partnership with
its academics. Through a profit-share
agreement, software developers
from the university have created
the platform for the business, which
Kavanagh says, is “a very good way
of doing business”.
But it is not a one-way transfer
of knowledge and ideas. Kavanagh
and his colleagues are mentoring a
group of students who have adapted
LearnerVerse to create an internet
platform to showcase music bands.
The company is growing in several
directions but Kavanagh says that
innovation has been built into their
business model.
“We always thought that the
platform could have a number
of uses and have designed it so
that it could be used with other
organisations: private tutors,
universities, businesses. They might
seem like lucky spin-offs, but actually
we thought carefully about it. We
planned to be innovative.”
Bell’s family has been farming for
more than 100 years; half of that time
has been at their 250-acre farm in
Upton Barton, Devon.
Farming always has a degree of
change built in as farmers adapt what
they produce to consumer demand
and market prices. The Bells began
as dairy farmers but switched to
arable land and beef under Bell’s
grandfather and 40 years ago started
growing rapeseed.
“Farming is our
family heritage but
that does not mean you have to do
the same thing the same way,” says
Bell, who has a degree in agriculture.
“I’ve spent the past 20 years looking
for new ways to add value to what
we produce.”
About six years ago, on impulse,
he purchased a miniature oil press
for £50 to see what would happen
if he cold-pressed rapeseed. “Until
then, we and most people who grew
rapeseed would put our crop on the
back of a lorry to be turned into
vegetable oil, margarine and for
use in the food industry. It was just
a commodity product. But the first
time I tried out the press I thought
‘we might have something here’.”
Bell reasoned that he could
make more money selling
premium-branded rapeseed oil than
commoditised rapeseed.
There was, of course, a big
difference between testing the
idea on a domestic oil press and
making commercial quantities, so
Bell approached the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs and managed to secure
funding to put together a business
plan and build a full-scale press.
Bell & Loxton’s first pressing was
launched in 2010 and Bell is planning
to expand the line. “The first thing
we want to do is make a name for
high-quality rapeseed oil but we are
working with another local company
to produce flavoured oils. We are
moving slower than other producers
whose oil already goes into spreads,
mayonnaise and other things but we
are happy. We don’t want to develop
products that people just put in the
back of the cupboard.”
51,238
patents filed in the UK in 2012
PHOTO TAKEN AT THE ROSEWOOD HOTEL, LONDON
11
561,377
509,960
Successful modern
entrepreneurship
JEWELLERFINDSITSSPARKLE
AFTERMOVING UPMARKET
Name Natasha Faith and
Semhal Zemikael
Positions Cofounders
Company La Diosa
Founded 2008
Employees 6
Growth trajectory “In 2013 grew
103 per cent compared to the
previous year”
La Diosa’s founders learnt their trade
while travelling through Mexico and
southeast Asia before returning to
London in 2008 and setting up shop
selling fashionable pieces priced
between £200 and £400.
KNITWEARBUSINESSHAS
INNOVATIONSTITCHEDUP
Name Ian Maclean
Position Managing director
Company John Smedley
Founded 1784
Employees 400
Growth trajectory “Aim is 5 to 10
per cent growth consistently year
on year”
Ian Maclean’s ancestor, John
Smedley, set up the clothing
manufacturer during the industrial
revolution. There have been a
number of revolutions since, which
have led the company to diversify
from mid-market to luxury, from
non-branded to branded, from
underwear to knitwear, from
traditional wholesale to selling direct
to customers.
“There has been price deflation
in textiles for a number of years
as a result of imports from
low-labour-cost countries and many
British textile companies have
disappeared. We have not so much
“We did quite well but we had
started at a time when many other
jewellers were beginning to create
diffusion lines because the recession
meant that most consumers could
no longer think about spending that
much on a piece of jewellery,”
Faith (pictured above, right) says.
This meant that the entrepreneurs
were competing in a crowded market
against well-established brands;
simply designing new products was
not enough to stand out. Instead,
they needed to create a new
business model to reach customers
who still had some disposable income
and who saw jewellery
as an investment.
“Diamonds and gold will never
“Diamonds and gold
will never lose their
value. People will
always invest”
lose their value,” Faith says. “People
will always think about investing. So
Semhal and I thought it would be a
smart move to go upstream. All our
product innovation was driven by
this change.”
Some creative people can find
it hard to temper their artistic
vision with commercial reality, but
it is a critical aspect of effective
innovation, Zemikael says. “We
are businesswomen before we are
designers. Obviously we love our
products but we have learnt that it
is important to have some emotional
separation . . . because this business
is not just about the product, it is
about selling and it is about the
customer.”
The pair did not want to radically
overhaul their designs but the
emphasis changed so that designs
became more classical and less
fashion-sensitive, while the average
price is now about £2,000.
This change has meant they have
lost some customers, but they have
gained new ones, including
an increasing number who are
commissioning bespoke pieces. The
only real hiccup came when they
prepared to start manufacturing
their new high-end designs and
realised that the supplier they were
working with, chosen partly for
affordability, was not able to meet
their expectations. This created a
delay of about four months while the
founders found a different — and
more expensive — supplier.
“We realised that if the end
result wasn’t the quality that we
expected that there was no point in
innovating,” Faith says. “In retrospect
I should have gone straight to
someone who was able to get it right
even though they would have been
more expensive.”
grown as changed our business
model,” Maclean says.
In 2000, the company started
selling direct to customers, through
its first branded store — on Brook
Street just off London’s prestigious
Bond Street — and through its
website. Both have been highly
successful with internet sales now
accounting for 25 per cent of business
and Maclean planning to open a
second store.
“The internet business is important
to us because the clothes sell for the
same price as they would in Harrods
or Selfridges or Harvey Nichols but
the margins are very different,” he
says. This has enabled the company
to increase sales from £13 million in
2000 to £17 million in 2014, while
retaining manufacturing in Britain
— in Matlock, Derbyshire — during
a time of intense competition from
companies importing products.
There is scope for innovation
in terms of the product that the
company makes as well as in its
business model.
Maclean explains that its designers
keep up to date with fashion via
trend monitoring services and
collaborations with outside designers,
such as Junya Watanabe from
Comme des Garçons.
Innovation also comes via less
obvious sources. “The traditional
separation between the designers
and the people who programme the
[knitting] machines is closing rapidly.
3D visual forms can be translated
into designs for the machines much
quicker via software advances. This
is speeding up the innovation process
and presents a challenge in that
people have to be technologically
literate to make use of the advances.”
The next opportunity Maclean
has his eye on is innovation away
from knitwear. “We have 50,000
customers on our database and
the question is ‘what things would
they like to buy from us other than
knitwear, with the same brand values
and high quality?’ I would like to see
us evolve and build on our British
manufacturing strengths, maybe
with a collaboration with another
British manufacturer.”
Sponsored by Santander
11
Successful modern
entrepreneurship
354,152
trademarks filed in the UK in 2012
820,662
trademarks filed in the US in 2012
The importance
of continuous
innovation
Marcelino Castrillo,
managing director
of SME Banking at
Santander UK, explains
how growing start-ups
can maintain their
innovative edge
I
f we think about innovation, the
businesses that spring to mind are
the likes of Apple and Facebook
— companies that have “created an
industry”. While these are impressive
stories, the more common innovative
businesses are those which identify an
untapped demand in an existing market.
One example is a publisher focused on
children’s books, Igloo. Igloo Books links
digital ebooks with the physical experience
of children’s books, where material is used
to demonstrate the textures of animals.
Being innovative isn’t always about inventing
something completely new, it can also be about
improving how things are done.
Businesses can innovate in two ways: either
acquiring the innovation from another business;
or through the business taking time to invest in
its strategy, processes, products and services. The
expenditure of time, people and money can be
costly. Therefore it is important to look at where
your industry is heading and ensure that your
business has a unique and relevant strategy to
stay ahead of your competitors.
Most creative and innovative people thrive in
an environment where they have freedom and
trust. Encourage your employees to explore new
projects that are different to what your business
normally does.
Not all projects will be successful, the key to
being an innovative business is to identify when
projects aren’t working out and learn from them.
Google, for example, ploughs billions of dollars
into product development every year to ensure
that it is ahead of the game in its fast-moving
market. Interestingly, it can’t be sure which
innovations will hit and which will miss, so it
places educated bets to ensure successful new
products evolve. Just one success can far
outweigh the costs of those that fail.
This approach is often also taken by start-ups,
their size and relatively low running costs
allowing the nimbleness to change direction
when something isn’t working or quickly drive it
forward when it does. For start-ups, innovation
often requires support and guidance. Incubators
such as CodeBase, founded by Jamie Coleman,
are places where new businesses can develop
ideas with the aid of experienced mentors.
These environments nurture innovation,
helping to push the boundaries of business.
Successful incubates include Plan for Cloud,
a comparison site recently acquired by
RightScale in Silicon Valley.
At Santander we are also keen to promote the
environment required to foster and sustain
business innovation. We recently launched our
own fast-growth business hub in our Liverpool
offices, providing early-stage SMEs with access to
a programme of support focused on leveraging
access to networks, knowledge and mentors,
emphasising the digital skills arena.
As a bank, we constantly challenge ourselves
to find new ways of supporting British business,
shaking up traditional views of lending to help
the start-ups of today become the world-class
trendsetters of tomorrow.
Today we launch our new marketing
campaign, through a series of high-profile events
and advertising. Santander Commercial and
Corporate Bank is making clear its intent to offer
something new to businesses in the UK, to
support them in achieving their next
breakthrough and ultimately their ambitions
and goals.
For more information on how Santander can help your business visit
santandercb.co.uk
COMICAPPROACHPROVESA
SUCCESSFORBARDLOVERS
Name Gary Bryant
Position Managing director
Company Classical Comics
Founded 2007
Employees 3
Growth trajectory “We hope
turnover will quadruple with plans
to break into the US”
Classical Comics was started by
Bryant’s younger brother, Clive, a
businessman whose love of literature
HOMEWARES BRANDSPIES
AGAPINTHE MARKET
Name Sachin Bagga
Position Director
Company Sabichi Homewares
Founded 1994
Employees about 60
Growth trajectory “Turnover is
around £13 million and should
reach £15-16 million next year”
Bagga’s father, Sam, began his
entrepreneurial career in the 1980s
selling tool belts and pouches to
retailers. Sabichi — named after
Sachin and his sister, Sabrina —
came about almost by accident when
one of Bagga senior’s clients was let
down by a bathroom supplier and
asked if he could help.
“Like any entrepreneur, he said
yes, not knowing a single thing about
bathroom products, then jumped on
a plane to China to find a source,”
Bagga says.
“We didn’t
develop
this for
the sake of
something
new, but to
add value ”
inspired him to find a way to help
children see its pleasures.
The result was graphic novel
versions of classical literature, each
of which is available in unabridged,
plain English and “quick text”
versions with reduced dialogue.
Initially the reception from
teachers was muted, so Bryant
(pictured above with sales director
April Carpenter) went back to the
drawing board. “Innovation does not
have to mean starting from scratch.
It can be about using things that
you already have. So what we
came up with was an interactive
motion comic.”
“Innovation can be expensive so it
is helpful when you know that what
you are doing is driven by demand,”
Bryant says. “We didn’t develop this
for the sake of having something
new, but as a way to add value to
what we were already doing.”
But it is a balancing act. Business
innovation is about finding a balance
between your ideas,
your passion, and
feedback from
customers,” he says.
Sam filled the order, impressed his
client and moved into a new business
supplying unbranded homewares to
retailers.
In 2008, however, Bagga decided
that it was time for Sabichi’s own
brand to come out of the shadows.
“We felt that there was opportunity
within the market to become a
home lifestyle brand,” he says. Sales
of Sabichi-brand products grew so
much that they make up almost 65
per cent of the business, up from
20 per cent. It has also given the
company more room to stretch its
creative legs.
The decision about whether and
how closely to follow a trend is a
tricky one — pick up something that
turns out to be a flash in the pan and
the company will look dated, but fail
to spot an enduring change and it is
an opportunity missed.
It helps to understand that not
every product will be a storming
success, Bagga says.
ENGINEERTHRIVESON
CUTTING-EDGEIDEAS
Name Neill Ricketts
Position Chief executive
Company Versarien
Employees 72
Founded 2010
Growth trajectory “The aim is to
reach £5 million revenue by the
end of this year”
When father of six Ricketts left
his job at Elektron to set up an
advanced materials company, his wife
thought he was crazy. “I’d gone from
managing 750 staff to just two of us
in my garage,” he says.
During his previous job he
had been impressed by research
undertaken at the University of
Liverpool into a cost-effective way of
creating natural structures in metallic
foams. “It’s a highly revolutionary
idea and I saw huge potential,” says
Ricketts, who claims materials such
as copper foam and graphene are the
steels of the future.
Versarien’s innovative business
model starts by forging close
relationships with academics working
on bright ideas at laboratory level.
It then makes the most of the
strategy support available from the
government’s Innovate UK agency
and blue-chip companies to achieve
production and application of the
idea as quickly as possible.
Going it alone has allowed Ricketts
to be more flexible and responsive
to new ideas. To help reduce the
time to market, Versarien has
acquired a handful of companies
with complementary technologies, to
manufacture components.
The company’s lean profile means
that all its systems are cloud-based
and there’s plenty of scope for mobile
working. Staff are incentivised with
flexible hours and share options.
“You have to be fleet of foot to keep
up with the pace. We’ve closed the
gap between the university work
and the time to market and the
academics are now bringing
cutting-edge ideas to us.”
11
Successful modern
entrepreneurship
10 I
ways to
innovate
nnovation matters. If we don’t
change our products and services and
the processes by which we deliver
them, then there’s a good chance
that we won’t survive long in today’s
turbulent marketplace. The issue isn’t
about whether or not to innovate but how.
The good news is that while innovation
remains a risky business there are some
key insights you can adopt.
Manage the process
pr
Innovation is a process of creating
value from ideas. Anyone can get lucky
once, but to repeat the trick you need a
process to manage it; it doesn’t have to be
bureaucratic but it should be systematic.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHING LI CHEW FOR THE TIMES
John Bessant
shares his tips on
being a successful
innovator
Explore all the options
There are many ways to innovate, from
changing our offering, updating our
processes, exploring new market contexts
or even switching our underlying business
model. Make sure you explore the full 360
degrees of opportunity.
Have a strategy
You need a clear roadmap of how
innovation will take the business forward.
It’s easy to shout about how important
innovation is, but you need to think
through a strategy for dealing with it, then
share that roadmap and make sure that
people buy into it.
4
5
Heed the small stuff
Most innovation is about doing what you
do a little better. Incremental innovation
adds up and has the additional advantage
adds
that it is much lower in risk, advancing
that
slowly along well-known frontiers.
mainstr
Mobilise the mainstream
Many organisations have specialists who
are given the responsibility
of innovation. But
of
everyone has the ability to
everyone
be creative, find solutions
to problems and come up
with new ideas. Smart
innovators mobilise
creativity across their
entire organisation.
6
Make connections
The game has shifted
from one where knowledge creation
and ownership was key, to one where
and
managing knowledge flow
flow is the critical
managing
ingredient. The good news for SMEs is you
don’t have to have all the resources for
innovation, you just need to know where
they are and how to connect to them.
inno
Build an innovative
organisation
Companies such as 3M and Google give
their staff time and space to experiment
in order to recreate the entrepreneurial
spirit which sparked their businesses.
Co-create with user
users
Learning from markets has always
been important but customers aren’t
passive; they can be a rich source of ideas.
Finding ways to tap into user innovation
generates diverse ideas and creates a
partnership with the market.
ccept failure
Accept
Learn from failures and use
the information to build and
strengthen capability for
the future.
Build dynamic
capability
Innovation involves constant
changes in technologies,
markets, competition,
regulation and a host of
other variables. Build on
these principles and
keep checking and
updating capabilities,
learning new tricks and
discarding old ones which
no longer work.
John Bessant is professor of
innovation and entrepreneurship
at the University of Exeter and co-author
of Strategic Innovation Management. For
more information on managing innovation
go to innovation-portal.info
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