Steering The Path to Business Growth: Innovate or Be Late

Companies seeking growth often face several challenges. On the one hand, this is the absence of business plans and growth strategies, innovative approaches and processes, and digital projects to improve the company. On the other hand, the trivial incompetence of employees and managers can become a serious barrier to business growth. There are cases where the expertise and experience of the owner hinder development. This also includes the lack of corporate culture, transparent communications, and ordinary human laziness — this never gets old.

In my opinion, the company's growth is mainly paralyzed by the fear of change. Growth means that you have to stop doing things the usual way because they do not bring a new effect and results that are different from the status quo. By and large, it is difficult to prepare for changes, there is never an ideal moment for them. You may not be ready, but you can make attempts. Courage and confidence usually follow.

Digital Transformation And Its Barriers

Today, the digital transformation concept, despite its spread, is pretty vague. This phrase can have many meanings — everything revolving around the transition from one state to another with the help of digital projects. The transformation began roughly fifty years ago with the introduction of digital workflow. Today, it is more about the organization's growth, optimization, and process automation. This is a qualitative leap forward, but at the same time, the entry threshold is almost zero. If a business owner has an idea to transform the company using the latest technologies, this is already a transformation, albeit a purely hypothetical one.

Why is digital transformation an issue for many? Changes in this direction should be continuous, not one-time. Let it not be a constant speed, but a constant acceleration should be observed. Today we notice some stagnation in the implementation of innovations. Indeed, on the one hand, we have seen a technological boom for decades — at least the transition from a rotary phone to bending displays. It is noteworthy that the level of digitalization in Western economies — Europe, the States, and Canada — is estimated at around 20%. That is, even developed countries with advanced technologies hardly use their potential. One of the reasons why this happens is because lag behind in evolution as compared with innovations. Over the past thirty years, an average of four generations of people have lived among us, some were born a few years ago and already use devices, and some have never had a mobile phone.

Thinking Innovatively: What It Means

For me, innovations belong in the realm of perfectionism. This is a new approach to familiar things which was not there before. I see it not as a finished product or service but rather as a continuous process aimed at improvement. Thinking innovatively means being open to changes that can not even be implemented but at least trying to do something differently. Even if, at first, it does not yield the desired result.

Innovations do not exist in a vacuum, they are tied to time and the human factor. I mean, in addition to the technologies themselves, their timeliness matters. There is a good example. Over ten years ago, the ICQ messenger was popular, perhaps the only communication application in which millions of users chatted. Few people know that the developers had already introduced the first chatbot into ICQ back then. Now chatbots are actively and widely used by businesses, they perform many functions, from customer service and sales to psychological assistance. If today it is in demand, at that time, no one used the bot and did not even understand its use, capabilities, and prospects.

In other words, we cannot always accept innovation and immediately start gaining experience and assessing its potential impact on society. Therefore, thinking innovatively also means understanding today’s context and analyzing behavioral patterns and trends.

How Entering New Markets Affects The Team

Business growth, like other significant stages in the company, is stressful. The state is inevitable and completely normal. Everything changes within the organization: new processes are introduced, people come and go, and employees are trained. The same applies to cultural aspects. You can't copy-paste and scale. It is necessary to take into account the geography and the corresponding localization. Entering new markets is a desirable and, at the same time, painful process.

To minimize stress, you need to keep the team motivated. For me, one of the most effective tools is delegation. Responsibility for processes, directions, and budgets helps a person to feel own importance and value for the company. The employee is endowed with a decision-making function, reflecting personal influence on the organization's success. In addition, transparent management always bears fruit at all times, especially in the growth process. A sincere, trusting relationship from person to person is a guarantee that the employee will not feel like a cog in a soulless system, but a respected human being that makes a difference.

The team's professional and personal growth is closely related to the growth of the business as a whole. Based on this, the company must listen closely to its people, in particular, their ambitions. Here we are talking about clearly setting goals and objectives, their achievement and measurement. Of course, a transparent reward system is a very first and most self-evident thing that a team member counts on, but it is far from the major thing. Everyone needs to be offered several options for professional advancement, comfortable and flexible conditions both for work and leisure. Only happy employees push the companies forward.

Cultivating An Innovative Mindset: Doing Things Right

In my opinion, instilling any mindset does not make any sense. People are different by nature: someone is an excellent performer, and someone is replete with new ideas, always getting off the beaten track. I think a worldview can only be imposed, but the question is, is it worth it?

It all starts with building a team — people who already have this innovative mentality from the beginning. These are, as a rule, people who try, make mistakes, but difficulties do not stop them but rather, on the contrary, inspire them. People who think innovatively have no fear of their own fail, and do not blame themselves for it. For them, a mistake is a sign on the road: upon seeing one, a person does not pull over to the side of the road and does not slow down. Instead, the adventurer behind the wheel gets informed of the further route, turns the music up, and hits the road.

In this article, Vladyslav Kopanko, a VP Delivery Account Management at Innovecs, shared his thoughts on business transformation and growth, how it affects teams, and why to think innovatively.

The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's AI Image Generator via the prompt "a kid's drawing of a car going up a mountain".