Are You Innovating Enough?

Innovate or die. Pushing the envelope. Doing it first. Thinking outside the box. Define the future and set the trends. Be offensive not defensive. Give your customers what they didn’t know they wanted or needed. Increase your brand loyalty and find new customers in unexpected niches. Be productive, responsive and inclusive. Interact and communicate to move forward. Always remember the customer comes first.

First published on the Radius blog – click for more insights or to subscribe

Yes, we want you to be innovating and constantly growing. However, this can’t be done overnight or by waving a magic wand. True innovation that leads to a new feature, product line, or an entire new way of doing a previously ingrained habit means you need to be working with a team of experts.

Look around your office right now, do you see experts in customer experience, human factors, or industry analysis? We’re guessing you answered no, no, and no. This is okay. You need to focus on what you do best and let us focus on developing and realizing your ideas.

Innovation Defined
The next big idea or thing is going to come from a company who has learned that innovation doesn’t happen in a silo. This company has learned that realistic innovation has to come through collaboration and partnership with a broad set of people who possess a deep range of ideas, experience, knowledge and skillsets.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, innovation is defined as:

1. The introduction of something new.
2. A new idea, method, or device.

This is the level that you always need to be striving for. We want you to take a step back and look at your recent product releases, features, and updates. Now ask yourself these questions about this recent work:

• What drove that latest feature update? Was it internal or external forces?
• Are you simply responding to customer demands or creating customer demand?
• Do you know how you’ll build on your latest release to keep the customer interested?
• Why are you focusing on updating a long-standing product and not looking at developing something completely new?
• Was this feature a result of the “we have to stick to our quarterly release schedule” mentality or did you truly offer something new, innovative and exciting?
• Is this latest update paving the way for future innovation or was it a catch-up to stay with the rest of the market?
• Are you excited by the work you’ve just done?

These are vital questions that you and your team need to think about when sitting down to discuss product roadmaps and the future of your company. The reality is that there are companies who are already asking themselves these questions and have owned the answers to these questions. To be blunt, they’ve faced reality and recognized that if they don’t change their ways and get back to true innovation, they might just be a forgotten company.

Now, we’re not trying to scare you. Rather, we want to motivate you and get you excited. We want you to be reading, learning, thinking, browsing, exploring and asking yourself what you want to do next.

Innovation Realized. Outcomes Achieved.
When you’re doing this fun stuff – the asking, the thinking, the research, the learning, the testing, the brainstorming, the risk taking – this is when the lightbulb goes off and you discover that nugget of an idea.

This is where we come in. We have the expertise in industry analysis, user interface strategy, human factors, and the ability to take your idea and really see where it goes. We don’t do boring and we don’t do old school. Nope, our team of researchers, designers, analysts, and innovators are with Radius because they want to think outside the box and push the envelope.

You want your toothbrush to give you feedback on how well you’re brushing your teeth? Okay, we can figure this out, come up with some ideas, test these ideas, create prototypes and see if people really want bio-feedback from their toothbrush. (Hint: the answer is yes.)

You have an idea for a product that takes advantage of augmented reality? Cool, let’s sit down and sketch out what this could look like, source materials, create a working prototype and get it in the hands of your target market. Now we can see if we’re too early (sometimes this happens and the market isn’t quite ready for your idea) or if we’re right on time and you’ll be the leader in this domain.

There is no guesswork or hypothesizing going on here. We back up our innovation process with real humans with real skillsets to give you the real innovation you need and deserve. Science, human-centered design, and industry analysis all come together to enable you to stand out from the pack and be a true leader.

Remember those questions we wanted you to ask yourself and your colleagues? Well, we ask ourselves similar questions when we’re looking at ways we can improve the way we work for you. Innovation must be at the core of every business. Think about healthcare, technology, home products, heating/cooling, housing, automotive, bicycles, orthodontics, music, etc. – real innovation is the gift that keeps on giving to you and your customers