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Many organizations face developing creative solutions to meet their customers’ preferences or stay in business in the present market. So, embracing innovation is quite important.
A survey from McKinsey Global Innovation states that even if 86% of business leaders find innovation essential for corporate growth, only 6% of them are happy with their companies’ innovative efforts. This means that organizations are aware they need innovation, but they struggle to implement it. Most businesses look to hire creative problem-solvers, but for most workers completing their daily tasks and creating innovative solutions beyond their daily tasks can be overwhelming. Employees are quite close to the work they do daily and want to provide a specific value, so they find it challenging to identify strategic improvements.
And this is why innovation consulting exists. Innovation consulting provides recommendations and direction to a company looking to modernize its operations and business model. It implies finding new strategies to provide customers with value. Innovation is commonly associated with technology, but innovation consulting can unlock business opportunities for organizations in many other sectors.
Here are the main benefits a business gets if it hires an innovation consultant.
An innovation consultant can help your business shake up the typical ways of doing things
The most important benefit of hiring an innovation consultant is that it helps your employees break their old habits. Most businesses and their employees have ingrained habits. Maybe it’s how some operations are completed, the way employees present to team managers, or how projects are planned and funded. Part of these habits exist for a reason, but others are only the legacy of the old times when people used to do things differently, and they serve no purpose.
If you hire an innovation consultant, they can evaluate the company and tell you what you need to do to integrate innovation successfully into your processes. They provide you with an outsider’s perspective and ensure your business will no longer follow the well-worn paths of your company.
Innovation consultants bring wisdom from outside industries
Another great benefit of innovation consulting is that an expert can provide expertise in various industries and for multiple kinds of organizations. Let’s say you’re in the healthcare sector. Your innovation consultant probably has knowledge of the industry, but they’ll also bring expertise from other adjacent or unrelated sectors. This is an excellent thing because you need outside inspiration when you’re searching for innovative solutions. Consultants usually work with businesses of all sizes, and from different markets, so they always bring diversity to the table. Maybe your healthcare company can learn something from the tech startup the innovation consultant worked in the past.
Innovation consultant help you focus your time
Most times, innovation consultants work with their clients through semi-formal workshops and meetings. The time they dedicate to identify the challenges your company’s dealing with is critical and invaluable. As a business manager, you may be overscheduled or crazy busy trying to control everything. You may think you have no time to squeeze innovation work into your 9 to 5 program, but you want innovation to happen. Working with an innovation consultant gives you time and freedom because they can handle all the tasks you’re too busy to complete. The consultant allows you to focus on the problems that matter.
The prospect of setting aside your work may overwhelm you, but innovation results are worth the effort. Hiring a consultant to help you take the time to work on essential issues in a collaborative manner with your employees can ensure the innovative measures’ success.
An innovation expert can articulate your vision
Not only that you’re too busy to handle the innovation adoption process by yourself, but you also lack the knowledge to articulate a strategy or identify the goals you want to reach. But through your collaboration with an expert, you’ll definitely come up with a plan that covers all details. The consultant can help you articulate a vision for a product, new features, or experience you want to provide its clients with.
Most innovation consultants offer their clients a document that asks them to summarize what they want to achieve with the integration of innovation. They can assist you in creating a prototype of your ideal experience. A professional consulting expert can articulate what your business has accomplished so far, create a prototype to present to your team, and help your organization get things done.
Innovation consultants can help you make connections
As stated earlier, innovation consultants work with companies and experts from various industries, and therefore they’re very connected and have an extensive network of professionals in the creative community. So, suppose you need to connect with experts or organizations during the innovation adoption process to support you in executing your plan. In that case, the consultant can help you find the right people. For example, if you need to work with a developer or a marketing company, they probably know talented specialists who are great candidates. They can put you in touch with companies and specialists you won’t have access to in other circumstances so that you can benefit from the best experience possible.
Innovation consulting encourages you to learn through doing
The last but not the least benefit you get when working with an innovation consultant is that you and your employees can learn about the best ways to integrate the process into your work. Nowadays, most businesses have their workers do training but don’t show them how to put the innovative methods into practice. You can hire a consultant to work with your team and show them how they can use the innovative measures to ease their work and improve their performance.
Innovation consultants walk your employees through various activities and methods to help them understand how the new additions and processes work. If they pay attention and take notes, they can leverage the knowledge on their own terms. When people see an expert in action, they learn through a process called osmosis, and they’re eager to try the techniques on their own when they spark creative thinking.
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