EXTRACTS FROM MY SOON TO BE PUBLISHED GUIDE FOR SMEs – IN SEARCH OF INNOVATION

My special interest in writing this guide relates to my wish to empower Australia’s 250,000 SMEs to successfully introduce innovation into their current businesses.

In contrast to the focus by all levels of Government (and universities) in this country on Start-ups (less than 5,000 country-wide), the SME sector has been largely ignored and there does not appear to be any titles specifically related to this topic available at bookstores or online.

Read, enjoy, learn and implement … Australia’s economy needs you!

Innovation is at its most simple ‘change’ i.e. change that adds value to someone … usually customers and/or the enterprise – it can be a product, service or process.

Most thinking people will agree the 21st century is characterised by unrelenting change, which basically means that if your business or organisation does not confront this new reality it will ultimately fail … not necessarily straightway but definitely at some stage.

Innovation at its most basic level involves change and bottom-line people in general, and managers in particular, usually try to avoid change if they possibly can.

In fact they have very good reason to think and act this way since human progress for many hundreds of years has evolved with proven ideas being rigorously systematised and applied – which is fair enough and in unchanging times is nearly always a sound strategy.

It is understandable that Corporations and large educational institutions are often described by academics as Rigid Efficient Systems, which succinctly captures this approach.

Unrelenting change is an unavoidable characteristic of the 21st century, which basically means if your business or organisation does not confront this new reality it will ultimately fail … not necessarily straightway but definitely at some stage.

Incorporating a framework to manage the innovation process, within any enterprise, is a necessary first step to truly becoming innovative and this approach should become a fundamental part of delivering modern day business leadership.

Dr Andrew M Connery is the Director of Innovation at CTPM Australasia and has been active online since 2001.

Andrew completed his PhD at the UOW’s Sydney Business School in 2015 his doctoral dissertation ‘Overcoming Barriers to the Introduction of Perceived Disruptive Innovations in to Rigid Efficient Systems’.

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