How Idea Generation Will Help Your Business Thrive From Within | Nextinit

How Idea Generation Will Help Your Business Thrive From Within

by | Oct 8, 2019 | news

For a business to thrive and evolve, it must be constantly generating and implementing new ideas. Sticking to what you know may work for a while, but eventually the competition will overtake your business and lead yours to stagnation. 

This kind of innovation isn’t always easy, after all, not all ideas will lead to innovative solutions. You may be overflowing with ideas, or you may be struggling to come up with any at all, and both can hinder the innovative process. 

But there are lots of ways to inspire idea generation and filter them down to the ones that will make a difference for your business. Read on to learn how idea generation will help your business thrive from within.

Building an Innovative Culture

The first thing your business needs to do to promote the idea generation process is to build a culture of innovation from within. We have discussed this in further depth in a previous blog post, but essentially, your business needs to make innovation a top priority for all people and it needs to be something that is completely natural within the business and not an exception.

Getting your people engaged and excited to come up with innovative ideas will help the business grow faster and stay ahead of the competition. Encouraging your people to submit ideas and find solutions can help resolve long-term pain points and boost employee engagement.

 

Having the Right Tools

The next thing your business needs for innovation management is to employ the right tools to nurture the idea generation process. Living in a connected world means that we have a computer in our pockets at all times. This is a tool that can deeply impact the idea generation process. The ability to ideate and collaborate on the go is something that was incomprehensible a decade ago.
 
But with apps like Nextinit, it’s easy for people to generate ideas no matter where they are. It makes it easy to filter down to the best ideas for your business. A free trial is available for users to see how it works in action.  The key draw to using Nextinit is that it thrives as a mobile platform. Many businesses within industrial sectors don’t use computers regularly throughout the day. In fact, some users have 100% of their users using Nextinit from their mobile devices. Having a tool that is accessible at any time is the key to maintaining a trajectory of innovation.

“The ability to ideate and collaborate on the go is something that was incomprehensible a decade ago.”

Consider Current Constraints

You want the ideation process to impact your business from within. But first, you need to first be aware of the current constraints and pain points your business faces. Consider the smallest internal hindrances to long-term problems that haven’t been resolved. Think about what is currently constraining your business.
 
Frame these constraints as challenges for you and your people to resolve. This can help keep your teams creative and help them stay focused on one specific problem. Focus on the most important problems to solve, and consider how feasible the idea is to implement and what the impact may be. Get people from all departments involved too. This way, you get to take on board all perspectives which will improve the chances of generating a winning idea.

Challenge Current Ideas 

The ideas you already work with may seem to be successful ones. But it’s important to take another look at them and challenge what you already have. They may be standing in the way of further innovation. Or, you may be able to find a way to refine them and make them more valuable to your business.
 
Challenging your current ideas helps to keep you on the path to innovation. This, in turn, will helps your business grow even further. Think about how outdated they may be, or how trends have changed which requires you to rethink your current strategy to adapt.

Implementation

The final stage of successful idea generation is to implement them. You first need to identify internal problems that need a solution. Then, you need to crowdsource your best ideas. It’s important to consider how you will put them into place.
 
There are a few reasons that companies fail to successfully implement their ideas. Often, it comes down to a few key reasons. One is budget – companies may not have the budget or be willing to invest in their winning ideas. This means that they never end up implementing an idea that could have saved or made more money in the long term. Another issue is simply a lack of commitment. Some companies don’t prioritize their idea implementation process and as a result, it falls to the sidelines. Instead, consider how to best implement the idea and make sure you devote the right resources and time to the idea for it to become a success. 
 
Helping your business thrive from within starts with idea generation. Ideas that help spark innovation and solve internal issues will keep your business ahead of the competition. This can help revitalize the way your business runs in the long-term.

To see how Nextinit can help your business with idea generation, try out our free trial to get started.