Funding Innovation

Funding Innovation

We all would like our organisations to be innovative but, like marketing, there is no such thing as free innovation.

So how do you manage it, measure its effectiveness and justify investment in it?

The most important thing is to figure out what is innovation actually is to you. 

It is not (necessarily) the new product or service. 

It is not the wizzy new advert

It’s not the new on line customer service line

It’s not the new way of assessing suppliers

It’s not the new QA system

It’s not about Six sigma Just in time, or Lean Manufacturing

It’s not about recruiting people who fit, not skills

It’s not about recruiting job titles

It’s not about stopping recruiting only people who have five years experience in your industry sector

Its not about allowing and encouraging risk

Its nor just about giving your people room and permission to fail

Its about all of the above.  And so much more

So how do you justify all these before? How did you justify the investment in the new machine tool, the new fleet of vans the new retail space. ( your web site)  Use the same metrics and arguments

Innovation is about continuous elimination or worst practice. How much is worst practice costing you?

Why I work for Free on Fridays -

So time to come clean. Why do I work for Free on Fridays?  Well it’s our second anniversary today. Crikey.!! Over 230 clients and organisations have had their ears (ever so gently) bent,  I estimate over 1000 cups of coffee, a several dozens packs of hob-knobs have fueled the process.

Well, originally it started out as a bit of a joke to annoy my accountant and make him work for his money but was really based from my own experience, starting from the point that sometimes, as a small micro business, you just need someone to bounce ideas off, particularly when it comes to figuring out how you go about telling the world that you are actually in business, you have no money and you are shy.  Not a great mix for a would be entrepreneur.

As Peter Drucker says ‘Business is about just two things, Marketing and Innovation.”

So finding someone who can be a sanity inspector, who could give me a push in the right direction and help me find a way of being different  from the 100 other nail bars, consultants,  or dog walkers was tricky but pretty well essential.  But that’s what I do and for some reason,  maybe I am wired a bit differently, I can do that. It’s a blessing and a curse.

It’s a curse because, when working on the bigger stuff,  I need an outlet for other ideas that are continually being generated  in this fucked up head of mine all the time. Or I just go mad. I’m  addicted to finding new ways of doing stuff, whether it’s the copy for a email or some aspect of customer service that makes them go ‘wow’ and hyperventilate or  just finding a way a business can stand out from the crowd. I am addicted to innovation, but innovation that delivers profit, not just for the sake of it.

Innovation without profitability is like a ferrari on your drive with no petrol. It looks great but is pretty well useless.  You can sit in it and make all the sound effects but you look like a dickhead.

So Fridays is just the best day of my week, I get to meet great, interesting people with passion and help them to solve their problems and polish their game. But actually while it is about them its mostly about me, and thats what Free on Fridays is for me. Therapy