Innovation Is No Longer A Dilemma, But An Imperative
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Although history won’t remember back that far, you can imagine what the invention of the wheel must have done for our early ancestors by opening realms of opportunity in terms of farming, travel and trade.
However, the newly invented wheel on its own would be of very little use.
Yet, visionaries stepped in to adapt the wheel to other apparatuses, giving it purpose and value: Toss in another wheel, add an axle, and you’ve got a rudimentary cart. Hitch that to an animal and you’ve got locomotion. Throw in a gear and you can direct-drive more creations.
Competition was created by the wheel. Other folks were inspired to accomplish more with less labor, creating a space for more innovation and more competition. That’s how the wheels of commerce began to turn 'round and 'round—even today.
Inventing the Wheel, Again
Like the inventor of the wheel, you have a goal in mind when it comes to reinventing your organization’s processes to become more efficient and productive. Alas, there are also matters the intrepid wheel inventor didn’t worry about at the time.
The inventor may have had a goal, but perhaps not a plan. Surely there was no established process in place but also no helicoptering bosses, timid shareholders, vast committees at odds with each other, or dogmatic playbooks. No politics, in other words. Nor did the wheel’s inventor experience the critical forces your business experiences today:
Now, more than ever, the consumer public at large is questioning why we have 19th-century tech in a 21st-century world.
Why fossil fuels? Where’s the sustainable energy? The Buckminster Fulleresque automation economy? All the subject matter that visionaries claimed is possible…yet institutionalized business dogma has failed to deliver.
The consumer public is not so much fickle as changing every day raising their standards. With the advent of the internet they bear witness daily to visionaries and innovators who present all sorts of possibilities & potentials which are seldom brought to fruition by change resistance.
Yet, while scofflaws posing as Voices of Industry may fearfully avoid innovation, affordable electric cars and Bitcoin are very much a reality thanks to determined innovation.
Do Put the Cart Before the Horse
In spite of this reluctance to embrace change, even companies that are slow to innovate—put the cart before the horse— admit they will have to enter the innovation mainstream merely to survive.
Indeed, innovation has become a critical imperative for your company to stay:
Competitive
Relevant
Fluid & flexible with respect to constantly-in-motion business & technological demands.
Perversely, the biggest companies that can most afford cutting-edge innovation also resist it the most. The Innovation Imperative means there’s never been a better time to be a small or medium-sized company.
As Alan Kay has said, "If large companies were actually rational, there'd never be a small company."
Let the Wheel Turn
It’s also a great time for IT to serve your company’s needs. Not just to survive but to exercise the vision required to create cutting-edge software solutions in a world demanding innovation.
Agile methodology (which is innovative itself) helps businesses fulfill colorful and even visionary demands in the wake of the Innovation Imperative.
Which leads to the next imperative, which is to thrive. Survive-ability segues into thrive-ability.
Yes innovation can be risky, but it doesn’t have to be needlessly so.
If you need help determining which are real technological risks and which are only imagined by those who consider innovation a frontier best avoided, contact the Intellection Group. They can help by introducing you to the best, most innovative talent for all your software needs. Or give them a call at 678-283-4283.