Innovation the key to sustainable competitive advantage

Innovation can be described as the utilisation to new skills and knowledge to create a new product or service which will be of use within the marketplace.
Another way of looking at it is as idea selection, development and commercialisation.

Innovation is seen to be the lifeblood of any organisation, ensuring that continual change underpins activities and that competitive advantage can be sustained. Always striving to improve, creating something new to better meet customers’ needs beyond how your competitors are meeting them.

An innovation is something new, it must be better than what exists, it must be economically viable and there must be widespread appeal.

Maintaining the status quo has for some been the principal focus during the economic downturn but those who have continued to invest in continual and even small changes are likely to emerge ahead of their competitors as the economy rebounds.

"Business is about balance," says Jerry Gauche, Senior Vice President at National Oilwell Varco (NOV). "You have to invest for the future, as well as create a cash flow that sustains the business in the short term."

You should always create options for what the future may bring.

Innovation is something which should resound throughout your organisation rather than it merely being the focus of a small group of people that are known to be creative.
It comes down to your organisation being customer orientated and being truly focused on meeting customers’ needs. If this forms the base of your organisational culture than innovation will be constant driver without you having to even think about it; it should be a natural outcome!

At Intelligent Information Systems we are constantly driven by our need to continually meet customer needs and support them in making their businesses even better. Our development team are focused on developing innovative solutions to build upon SAP Business One to make it enhance existing functionalities.

Related Blog Post: Creativity the key to innovation

http://intelligentinformationsystems.blogspot.com/2010/08/boost-creativity-key-to-innovation.html