Ideas About Ideas

We’ve all heard the scary stats… how many small businesses fail within the first five years… how few survive in the five years thereafter. Why is it so? Obviously there are many reasons, but today I’d like to focus on the ability for a business and it’s owner’s to be able to deal with change. Change is the only constant… if you fail to plan you plan to fail… we’ve all heard the clichés – but what are we doing about it in our small businesses?

A small businesses’ ability to brainstorm and implement ideas, in my opinion, will be a prime factor in its ability to survive in a constantly changing market over the next five years. To follow are some ideas… on ideas!

An innovation doesn’t have to be a huge idea. Tiny incremental improvements are a great way for a company to step forward. I found in our business that I was an “incremental innovator” – little ideas daily or more often leading towards a common goal. My business partner was more of a “huge leap forward innovator” – his ideas weren’t every day, but were usually a big picture idea or a large change to the company dynamic.

If you’re encouraging members of your team to innovate, be very careful how you deal with ideas you don’t like. No-one likes to feel stupid and not adopting an idea put forward by your team can lead them to feel like it’s not worth suggesting the next one. I’m not saying implement everything they suggest – I’m just saying if you want their contribution in the future, handle the rejection with care.

Of the ideas I’ve had over the years, perhaps only 50 per cent were good enough and practical enough to be implemented. From there, 80 per cent either wouldn’t work or wouldn’t dramatically change the landscape of our business. This of course means that only about 10 per cent of my ideas and innovations went to market and made a difference. If those ratios were to hold true in your business how many new ideas would you want to be coming up with a week to keep your business moving along at the pace you require? 10? 50? 1000? Only you can answer that question.

I’ve found I’m inspired to innovate by:

• Going on holidays or a short break
• A long boring trip somewhere (some of my best ideas come to me on planes with no movies!)
• Taking key people out to lunch to discuss a problem or issue
• Reading business books and articles
• Reading customer complaint letters or dealing with phone calls
• Meetings. Okay – I don’t come up with the ideas in the meetings, but that’s sure as heck where I get things done towards implementation.
• Exploring a really great business
• Going into and exploring a mediocre (could be doing better) or a really bad business!
• Asking myself what Richard Branson, Donald Trump or Anita Roddick would do if they were in our industry?