Growth Opportunities: How to Harness Emerging Trends to Reshape Your Business
We live in an era of rapid change, requiring skillsets that enable business agility. The rules of yesterday might not be as relevant today, and the game constantly evolves. Thus, a question every leader and entrepreneur must ask themselves is: What kind of skills can keep my team ahead?
Growth Innovation Strategy has written about innovative paths to company agility before — how to spot important changes, how to use our TRENDWISE tool to aid your disruption analysis, and how to develop strategies to capitalize on change (even in a downturn).
Today, let’s talk about people, and the skills they need:
Five Pillars for a Forward-Thinking Innovation Team
A team that's ready to tackle the future should be equipped with the following skills:
Sense the Change: It's crucial to understand the trends and identify the driving forces behind them.
Predict Reactions: Form hypotheses about how different customer segments might react to changing conditions.
Be a Customer Watchdog: Observe how people use products, similar to yours, in their daily life to gain insights into behavior and preferences.
Understand the 'Job-To-Be-Done': This means reframing product desires, features, and experiences around the primary goals customers aim to achieve.
Break Free From the Mold: Constantly challenge established norms and question assumptions to avoid getting stuck in dated ways of thinking.
In our latest video from Growth Innovation Strategy, we dig deep into skillsets — and practical “how-to” activities — that fuel an effective strategy for growth opportunity identification that’s built around emerging trends, unmet customer needs, and strategies to navigate the competitive landscape.
By mastering these skillsets, your team will be in sync with the changing tides. They'll have insights into customer behavior, motivations, and have enough evidence to arm them with courage to disrupt the established order.
Harnessing the Pareto Principle for Innovation
The Pareto Principle is an age-old adage suggesting that a major chunk (around 80%) of the effects comes from a minor chunk (roughly 20%) of the causes. Translated to innovation, it implies that value-driven results can be achieved with focused and effective efforts. Techniques such as scenario analysis, targeted observations, interviews, and brainstorming sessions can often yield significant insights even if you take a rudimentary approach.
Diving Deeper into Analysis
Chances are, this video gives you enough food for thought to try experimenting with these tools on your team.
For those looking to delve deeper into research and analysis, GIS regularly helps our clients with scenario planning, understanding customers and competitive analysis.
Get Help, Get Training
If you have further questions, are seeking guidance, or want professional assistance, reach out via email to innovation@growthinnovationstrategy.com.
