Why it’s important to develop innovative products
According to BusinessMantra.net, “Innovation is one of the most important aspects for the growth of an organization to excel ahead in competition, unless there is innovation a company cannot command respect and recognition, invention is one of the most important priorities to stay in competition and keep your audience looped and attracted to your company products. If it wouldn’t have been for innovation, we had been still be living a nomadic lifestyle as our ancestors did. “
Today’s most successful companies all have one thing in common: they constantly come up with new products to stay on top of the competition.
Among Laptop Magazine’s top 25 most innovative products of 2010 were D-Link’s Boxee Box, a “box” which lets you hook up a device with a small display to your TV screen in order to watch streaming videos from the Internet, the Dell Streak, an Android-powered gadget that can used as both a tablet and a phone, that and of course, Apple’s iPad, which I think needs no further description. Coming up with innovative products is a rewarding, yet challenging process.
Challenges in developing innovative products
Ideas for innovative products don’t just appear. To develop innovative products, companies need a clear product innovation strategy. They need to do their research, clearly define their goals, find out what the market wants, which customers to target, and figure our which technologies to use in order to gain an edge in bringing value to their target customers. In one of his recent blog posts, blogger Jeffrey Phillips of Innovate on Purpose (innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com) explains “most firms today have great difficulty describing what their goals and strategies are, and that filters down to innovation. No vision, no strategy, no innovation. Increasingly a business becomes comfortable with small bore ideas that provide only modest incremental improvement.”
Once ideas are gathered, it is often challenging to decide which ideas to implement. Part of what restricts companies from making these decisions is lack of communication between all involved parties. There is also the challenge of knowing exactly which ideas would be most beneficial to the company, as it can be hard to keep track of business goals.
Developing successful innovative products with OneDesk
Innovation starts with great ideas. In order to come up with them, you need to step into your customers’ shoes and learn about what works and what doesn’t.
With OneDesk, it’s easy to capture ideas from customers with our customer feedback application. Moreover, customer-driven innovation is emphasized as our software allows you involve your entire team in the development process. OneDesk also facilitates communication and collaboration. Your employees and business partners can now understand exactly what customers want, no matter what their position is, by being involved in listening to customer feedback and keeping track of the conversations anyone can have with them in order to elaborate on them.
Once you have ideas, how do you know which idea is worth turning into a product? Through OneDesk, customers can answer polls you create and vote on ideas they like best. OneDesk’s project management and requirements analysis tools allow you to evaluate which ideas fit your budget and align with your business goals.
We want to know: What strategies does your company use to develop innovative products?
Related blog posts:
Innovative Ideas: Important!
Customer Innovation: Drives business growth
Innovation in the Workplace
Mass customization: Creating value
Company goals: Achieving them
New Product Development: Changing