Three business trends: Innovation, Innovation, Innovation (and, oh yea, creativity)

Read any business magazine or attend any seminar and you will probably hear the word innovation over and over again. Businesses must be innovative or be left behind.  New and better products or services are what keep a company moving forward and growing their customer base.  All true.  Innovation, however, requires more than writing it in a business plan.  Innovation, by definition, is applied creativity. Creativity must come first and it can be a messy process by business standards.

Let's talk about what creativity is and is not.  Creativity is...

• That which separates us from other animals.
• A gift that all human beings have and use every day.
• A process where humans can imagine something that is not immediately available to our senses.
• Something that can be developed by anyone.

Creativity is not...

• Limited to artistic endeavors such as painting, sculpting, or playing a musical instrument.
• Limited to grand discoveries by geniuses.
• An anything-goes, free-for-all.
• Something we can live without.

Creativity needs a few things in order to be realized.  There must be a culture where the free flow of ideas is welcome and the rush to judgment is suspended.  Failure, always a part of the creative process, must be tolerated to a certain extent.  It cannot be fitted into a short time frame and ideas must be allowed to incubate.  Last, creativity and innovation tends to be its own reward and people must be internally motivated to engage the process.

Innovation is key.  But innovation necessarily relies on the creative process.  Is your company promoting creativity? If so, are you ready for it?

Is your business sitting on a data Gold Mine?

Many businesses have been storing data for years.  Data are the raw numbers that record unique events or amounts.  By itself, data cannot tell you a whole lot.  But, if you have a data base or spreadsheet with customer information, sales data, related business costs, or other records about your operations you should be mining that data and returning it as useful information. 
Most desktop applications provide basic but powerful tools to query and retrieve that data and format it into finished reports, tables, and graphs.  Some even give you basic graphical user interface (GUI) tools to write some basic queries without using SQL. SQL stands for Structured Query Language which is the standard language for retrieving data. 

The basic understanding is that data of one type may be related to a different set of data (note-even the lack of a relationship between particular data may be meaningful).  For example,  a common relationship is the one between sales volume and time of year.  The challenge (and the fun part, I think) is to analyze more complex or multiple relationships.  What effect does gender have on cash versus credit sales?  What are new customers in a certain age group from a certain neighborhood more likely to buy?  Basket analysis and cube computing is where the real gold lies.

You may already be sitting on some of the best market research available. Mining information from your data can help you focus your marketing campaigns and more efficiently allocate resources.  You may discover new business opportunities or spot market trends. All you have to do is go get it.

Business Ethics: Maybe Not a Contradiction

I attended a recent Leadership simulcast sponsored by Chick-Fil-A.  There's been quite a change in the attitudes and approach to managing and leading a business since I graduated from college almost 30 years ago. In fact, the simulcast could have been sponsored by the seminary I attended almost 15 years ago.

Leadership as service.  That was a primary theme through out the program.  The word profit was rarely mentioned.  Much more common were phrases like "higher calling" or "being part of something bigger than yourself"  and " being responsible to your employees."  Employers had a duty to develop an employee and find spot were he or she can succeed.

Doing the right thing was not only the ethical choice but it was also the smart choice from a business perspective.  Growing a company and earning a profit is not a bad thing and it is still necessary for a business to succeed.  But it is achieved through making choices that are considerate of the people you hire.  Some speakers used the term 'love' when describing their attitude toward the people that work for them.
Practically speaking, employees that are engaged in their work, that trust management, and that feel that they are growing professionally tend to stay in their current jobs.  Reduced employee turnover affects the bottom line.  But sometimes is good to do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do.