Driving Innovation in Entrepreneurship

Small businesses fuel Alberta’s economy. It’s their nimble size, creative energy, bootstrapping nature and their capacity for risk that gives them the remarkable ability to adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace. As small businesses grow, they can forget the innovation basics that helped them to become successful in the first place. Innovation should, in fact, be a perpetual and ongoing activity that every small business owner invests time towards.

So, how can your business be more innovative or creative? The following tips can helpensure your business stays ahead of the curve:

• Dedicate time for ideas – Most meetings are highly structured and are set out to achieve a particular objective. Instead, dedicate periods of time to hold brainstorming sessions for exploration. Free thinking can often help find solutions that you wouldn’t have otherwise contemplated.
• Collaborate with others – Communication and networking are critical skills to invest time towards. The best new ideas often come from a team approach. Learn how to work through and solve problems with other people.
• Judge less, explore more – Accept that not every idea brainstormed will be acted on. In order to find the very best and most creative concepts, you need to sort through a pile of options.
• Create pilots – The best way to test a new concept is through trial and error. Introduce pilot programs to test the feasibility of new concepts, products, or services. If the pilot doesn’t work; learn from it, and then find another idea to try out.