Harnessing the ‘innovative potential’ locked in your business and learning how to innovate through new creative skills, know-how and use of design is one way to do this. Whether you are tackling a declining market, need to address ageing products or services or are looking to grow by entering new markets, you will need to consider:

How to identify new opportunities: Learning to think creatively will open up new opportunities and ideas for a business and, combined with the right processes and tools, will enable you to evaluate how your business can best approach innovation, including when to access external expertise.

How to research your ideas: Access to good quality market intelligence, a good understanding of the potential market and evidence, specialist knowledge and expertise, may all be needed to provide proof of a market or the technical potential out there before you embark on a major commitment.

Find finance and tax efficient ways to support innovation: Finance is a key ingredient in the process of developing new ideas. Insufficient working capital, the potentially long development period before new ideas generate a return, and uncertainty about whether a project will work can be major barriers to securing investment. These should all be considered, alongside tax incentives and access to national or local funding, which may be available to help.

Manage the innovation process: Managing new opportunities and their challenges demand careful planning and controls. You may need to develop your processes further or adopt best practice to improve your chance of success and look at harnessing the potential of clever design.

Protect and value your ideas: When you develop or invent something new, Intellectual Property (IP) needs to be considered and there are various forms of protection to adopt, from Patent to Trade Marks, that will enable you to protect your product, process or service. There may also be IP in the business that has real value that has not been recognised which could be exploited. In both cases the value of these can often be identified and commercialised or added to the businesses balance sheet.

Commercialise your ideas and get into new markets: Getting the best return from your investment in innovation will depend on protecting your idea, identifying the market, finding the right route into this market, an understanding of what’s ‘hot’ and what’s ‘not’, your competitors and having the right finance in place.

Common problems or barriers: Technical or commercial problems can often delay or block business innovation and this can be a real frustration for the business. This is when you may have to explore and adopt alternative solutions or approaches.

The Business Growth Hub can help you to you access to specialist services and assistance designed to help you innovate.