We were asked to talk about a topic at the first 'Speakers Club' held at Farmer Autovillage, organised by ActionCoach Hamish Carnie. Mike Farmer, the Managing Director of Farmer Autovillage, and Timothy Allan, from Locus Research spoke the the early breakfast crowd.
Mike spoke first and gave some great insights to running a successful and progressive business.
We decided to speak about 'Fostering Innovation in Your Business', how do you apply innovation in the context of a 'normal' business. The speakers club concept is popular elsewhere and the modern concept has groups of business owners and people talking about a topic of special interest which the group may benefit from.
cIt certainly got us thinking, as usually we talk about innovation in the development of new products and services. This time it was purely about how to be innovative within your business.
Innovation, above all is a process, or a structure to make changes to something that exists. You have to make it relevant to your business, a core part of how your business operates, and make your team feel it is part of what they do.
We talked about the importance of research which helps to build understanding, and then delivers the insights which can helpf transform both what we do, and how we do it. A development process can be distilled down to something which can be applied and used in your business generally:
