“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”  Ben Franklin

Let’s take it a little further.  Involve me regularly and creatively and I will become a productive innovator.  Why innovate?  Because innovation is a catalyst for growth.

One of the key components to expanding your top line and keeping your gross margins high is to elevate your company to the Innovative Zone .  This zone goes beyond what your customers are asking for by anticipating what they will be asking for tomorrow.  You should anticipate future needs and offer solutions your customers will want and are willing to pay for.

So how do you get yourself to the innovative zone?  Your company culture needs to encourage and facilitate innovation.  An innovative culture begins and ends at the TOP. Involve and engage your senior executives in fostering innovation as an objective. Leave the production and day to day operations to the middle management.

Many leaders kill innovation by making the mistake of focusing on the competition.  The senior team must spend most of its time in the industry and on customer facing activities. This will keep them aware of shifts and trends in the market and the pulse of the customers.   The collective knowledge gained and analyzed uncovers new ways of solving big problems, which can lead to much more innovative products or services. The senior team must know what their core customer needs and is willing to pay for before the customer knows.

If everyone working at the company knows that innovating is a key goal and that they will be rewarded for thinking innovatively, how will they think?  The unique power comes from combining the variety and richness of experiences, ideas and perspectives from Sales, Marketing, Finance, Engineering and Operations to come up with profitable solutions to tough industry problems.

Get in the innovation zone.  SeeMetrics Partners can help. Want to learn more? Check out our podcast series.