Today, innovation moves almost at the speed of thought. The business model you had, the job you had and the services you provide could very easily be outdated in the same decade they were created. What does that mean to you as a business owner or CEO?
Work on your culture more than you work on your strategy. Create an organization where ideas thrive and where failure is a badge of courage rather than a black mark on your reputation. Allow new ideas to develop and flourish and be celebrated as well as enjoying failure. Run controlled business experiments where there is an acceptable loss or failure. Try things that are on gut or hunch because of the style and trends that you “feel” are moving in the right direction for the initiative.
Create a “Creative Culture” or even a “skunk works” division of your company that can and does fail because it is their job. I have been speaking a lot recently to West Coast and East Coast technology executives and the most important reason they feel that 74% of the Venture Capital in the US raised goes to Silicon Valley rather than all the other hotbeds of technology across the US, is the culture of the valley celebrates failure as well as innovation.
I am not telling you to spend willy-nilly money on any new idea that marketing brings you. I am telling you that you should have a line item in the P & L to run the experiment. If you don’t, the competition that has this type of culture will be beating you soon.
