How To Unlock Small Business Growth Through Innovation

The street corner business you have come to love and patronize is not growing because the owner does not think about innovation.

He/she is more concerned about handling the day-to-day operations of the business and getting enough to make ends meet.

This is also true for most small businesses across Nigeria today.

They are not thinking about creative ways to do things or effective tools to increase productivity and profit.

And that is why we have so many small and micro businesses that should have become multinational companies but remain stuck as small businesses struggling to survive.

But the only way to avoid this is to incorporate innovation into your small business.

In this article, we share four strategies your small business can implement to unlock growth through innovation.

Four (4) Strategies to Unlock Growth Through Innovation in Your Small Business

1. Build A Culture of Innovation

Innovative ideas to grow small businesses cannot come only from the business owner.

There must be a culture that encourages everyone in the business to constantly look for new ways of doing things.

You can do this by keeping communication channels open. This will allow communication to flow from your employees to top management as fast as from top management to employees.

Apart from this, you have to ask for suggestions from your team regularly, so they remember their insights matter.

How you treat ideas or suggestions also matters.

If you are quick to shut down bad ideas and criticize ideas just because you think it’s bad, you would get fewer ideas; good or bad from your people.

You can encourage employees to be more forthcoming with innovative ideas by recognizing the brilliant aspects of their suggestions, or ideas. You can also reward excellent ideas and brainstorm on the best solution from all the ideas collected.

2. Look For Innovation Opportunities

Innovation cannot occur in a vacuum.

This is why small businesses must analyse their market and collect feedback from customers regularly. This is to decide on new trends, technologies and improvements they can adopt.

Such research would present opportunities for small businesses to innovate.

The more insight your business can get, the more opportunities it has to be innovative.

Some of these opportunities may not immediately be clear to you, which is why small businesses have to train their employees to have an ownership mindset that allows them the freedom to look for areas for improvement and suggest changes.

3. Test New Ideas Quickly

Small businesses are better equipped to innovate because they can make decisions quickly.

This is critical for innovation; your business must test new ideas and suggestions quickly to reap the benefits.

Speed is your advantage. The faster you test your ideas, the fewer resources it consumes and the more competitive edge it carves for your small business.

Move fast and test new ideas.

4. Invest in innovation.

To be honest, it is easier to focus on your operations like the roadside vendor than to innovate.

Innovation is challenging work and costs money and time.

That is why if you really want to unlock growth for your small business through innovation, you have to be ready to spend money on new ideas and technology that may not work.

You have to be ready to invest in yourself and your employees so that they can bring innovation to everything they do.

It is easy to make such an investment if you include it in your budget. No matter how small, as you spend X Naira on marketing, you should spend Y on innovation.

PLUS: Whenever you’re ready, here are ways you can work with us in starting, growing and scaling your business:

1. Do you want direct advisory and mentorship and would like to work with me one-on-one? 

The Accelerator, our exclusive 12-month programme, is for entrepreneurs who are looking to increase their profitability, create more balance in their lives and are ready to become wealthy by building self-managing, owner-independent businesses. Click here to apply now

2. Buy my book, click here

3. To visit our YouTube channel, click here

Photo by Gustavo Fring

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