Looking beyond your industry for ideas

We need to start looking at innovation in a different light. It’s important to look at other industries to identify great opportunities of how they’ve innovated.

When doing your exploring, they should be in a totally unrelated field. Look at their processes, follow-ups, questions, how they involve customers, people involved, a product offering… the list is literally endless. It can be anything as small as how they answer the phone, all the way through to the strategies used to launch a major product. 

Think of it as the all-seeing eye

The world is your oyster, and it’s important to embrace all opportunities. As you’re reflecting on what you’re currently doing to evolve the current service experience, it’s vital to identify great examples from other industries that you connect with.

You’ll uncover goodies like these approaches:

  • Present yourself at events or conferences – where your competitors would not consider
  • Take an interesting angle or story to share with other people that can help promote your business and how it operates
  • New processes on guaranteeing the quality of your product or service, after it’s delivery
  • New ways to respond to customer complaints, inspired by other industries
  • Strategies to maintain a relationship and provide knowledge, expertise and insight that stakeholders would find valuable.

To be creative and challenge the norm you need to look beyond your own space and sector – otherwise it is the blind leading the blind. There are literally so many ways you can innovate. But first, it’s important to understand that innovation doesn’t have to be some big, light bulb idea. 

Innovators are good at associating. They make connections between seemingly unrelated problems and ideas and synthesise new ideas. Be an observer. Be curious. Be open to questioning how things are done.

We’ve got some homework for you. Consider an innovative experience you’ve had recently, as a customer. Ask yourself these three questions:

  • What was it about this experience that had such a positive impact on you?
  • How would you be able to take the most valuable elements of this experience and make it relevant to your own business?
  • What key actions would you need to begin to make these changes a reality?

 

Taking an entrepreneurial mindset and a willingness to change past approaches and evolve them is key.

Are your products really addressing their current needs? And what about your people? Do they have the skills and openness to drive real change?

At Kiikstart, we’re dedicated to helping people have more choice, influence and control about how they live, work and learn. If you’d like to hear more about what we do, contact us today on 0428 593 400 or enquiries@kiikstart.com.