We are in the age of artificial intelligence, especially generative artificial intelligence, filling the world, creating new innovators. And the car changed society.
Today there is a sudden wave of innovation, born of new developments in artificial intelligence and led by founders such as Von Siemens, Edison, Pasteur, and Benz, whose names go down in history.
How do established companies last?
Upstarts are founded by visionaries willing to take risks and challenge the status quo. But established businesses are often held back by outdated systems, outmoded mindsets, and fear of failure. Corporate therapy is needed to break old patterns.
Every large corporation has untapped opportunities, potential for new growth and revenue streams, and pockets of incredible new talent, but senior management must be willing to take risks to innovate. It’s hard to do. Instead, CEOs of established companies focus on incremental improvements to existing products, leaving their businesses vulnerable.
Innovation requires a vision that limits the obsession with destroying entire markets. First of all, you need to trust. Senior management must be willing to let go and allow others (junior or outside consultants, product managers, engineers, designers) to test ideas, build and iterate with users, and lead forward. Make sure it’s impossible from day one. But the potential benefits are huge.
It also requires a financial commitment. Real change cannot happen without serious investment, so companies must be ready to put their money where they want to be.
Consider an on-demand package warehouse and order fulfillment platform built by a global package delivery company to diversify your offerings. The company began creating a kind of internal accelerator in a separate space where a small team could freely explore new ideas in the growing e-commerce market.
The team is separated from the main organizational structure to encourage innovation and eliminate organizational limitations. He spent weeks evaluating various options before settling on them. He then earnestly asked to start the new service for several months. This type of entrepreneurship gives freedom and speed.
The result is a sophisticated warehousing and fulfillment network tailored to the needs of business-to-business e-commerce.
The platform uses artificial intelligence to analyze historical data and predict future demand, allowing retailers to optimize their inventory and delivery schedules. It uses artificial intelligence to manage orders and optimize warehouse operations, resulting in faster and more efficient order fulfillment.
The company could have remained just a freight forwarding service, but it successfully expanded its business by leveraging existing assets and exploring new opportunities, strengthening its position in the market. Instead of losing out to competitive competitors, it has taken the lead in this fast-growing market segment.
One of the challenges of innovation is that employees are a vital part of an organization’s ability to create new opportunities for growth. Although a small group can inspire new business, all corporate employees must know and embrace what is being done. If people work in bunkers, they leave. And fresh ideas often come from the most unexpected places.
The key lesson is to look for growth opportunities outside of the core business and use the excess talent on the payroll for innovation and scale.
Take, for example, a large aerospace company with extensive experience in satellite technology. The head of the support division saw an opportunity for a strong revenue stream and brought in outside “business developers” to investigate ideas. Six months later, the division launched a cloud-based geospatial analytics platform for developers and analysts to access satellite data, aerial imagery and other geospatial data sources.
The new business gave the aerospace company access to the growing geospatial analytics market, and today it is the market leader in geospatial data. The innovation not only expanded the parent company’s business horizons but also demonstrated its ability to follow new trends.
By breaking traditional patterns and creating something new, companies can reinvent themselves without falling behind. In some cases, companies may need external support (certified business entrepreneurs) to work closely with their team and speed up the process. Ultimately, the goal is to provide the freedom to explore new opportunities that foster creativity.
With this foreign aid, a food and agriculture business has built a profitable company to improve the lives of small farmers. The company offers a suite of one-stop services for small farmers, including credit facilities, an online store for high-quality inputs, a machine learning-based incentive engine, and a direct product sales application. More than 150,000 farmers have been reached and most of them have increased their productivity and income by 25%.
These are just a few examples of how innovative companies are disrupting industries. But why are these companies able to innovate and disrupt while others struggle? Most business leaders are familiar with the innovation agenda, but few have the real commitment to funding, experimentation, and entrepreneurship.
Businesses can encourage innovation by rapidly building, testing and researching small viable products. By bringing products to market faster, companies can gauge their audience’s response and take appropriate action instead of lingering through long internal development cycles. An important part of this innovation process is the integration of new technologies, including creative artificial intelligence, which allows companies to create better products and services.
To find their next light bulb, companies must embrace the idea of relying on “mini Edisons,” the most curious and the most anxious, building new products and taking risks inside and outside the company. Passionate innovators should be given the freedom to create and experiment, because their drive to innovate leads to significant breakthroughs and ultimately success.
By developing a culture that encourages genuine business experimentation and risk-taking, companies can unlock the full potential of their employees and remain competitive in a changing business environment.
Failure is not limited to digital natives or artificial intelligence. Even traditional companies have great potential for innovation if they are willing to take risks. By identifying and encouraging passionate innovators, traditional businesses can find new revenue streams, stay ahead of the competition, and grow.
