Small business will succeed through innovation

April 3, 2009 · Filed Under SME Businesses, Small & Medium Businesses · Comment 

There has been an excellent study been released by Intuit titled “Small businesses will innovate today to succeed tomorrow”.

This study shows that Small Business is the natural innovator of the economy. Through the forces that drive small business owners to look for the development of the business and market they are inspired to innovate.

This study found that small businesses have a number of innovation advantages that enable them to more readily identify opportunities, quickly react to changing conditions and remain competitive. The six innovation enablers include :

  • Personal Passion – as it is there own money on the line, small business owners are willing to try new approaches.
  • Customer connection – in a small business there is a stronger connection between the business and the customers. This helps small business understand customer needs, identify new opportunities and fix problems quickly and efficiently.
  • Agility and adaptation – unlike large corporations, small businesses can quickly adapt to changing market conditions and implement new business practices.
  • Experimentation and improvisation – when pursuing new opportunities, many small business owners and managers aren’t afraid to experiment and improvise, accepting failure as a part of the path to success.
  • Resource limitation – small businesses are adept at doing more with less. And these resource constraints lend to their innovative mindset
  • Information sharing and collaboration – small businesses traditionally rely on strong social networks to share information and inspire innovative thinking.

These enablers listed above succinctly summarise the life of a small business.

It is key for the future of small business to be continually innovating. To do this it is necessary to ensure that the business is focused on the customer. The business needs to be listening to the customer and ensuring that their product or service is serving a need of the customer. It we keep doing what has always been done then the innovation will die and the business will follow.

Focus on what matters to the customer. Measure what matters – measure what is important to the customer.

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