With the Covid-19 pandemic, consumer desires and patterns have changed. Companies have been affected by the various waves of the virus, and have had to rethink all their long-term strategies. And yet, at the same time, there have never been so many start-ups in France, thanks to French tech. Despite their youth, they have the potential to shake up large, long-established companies or those in the CAC40. These companies must not forget to innovate, nor to encourage their teams to do so. To stay competitive, they need to address today's issues.
# Not to innovate is to be surpassed by others.
No, innovation isn't just about inventing a new product from scratch, which means taking huge risks.
According to M&BD's article on the ability to innovate, innovation exists in 4 different forms:
- Product innovation or improvement: the company creates a new product that changes or overturns consumer habits. It can also modify an existing product to improve it. The telephone industry, for example, launches a new product every year and creates new updates fairly frequently.
- Process innovation which consists in rethinking production methods and distribution (software, machines). The best-known example is Internet sales. E-commerce, being able to pay by phone, consulting a restaurant menu by scanning a QR code are all process innovations.
- Marketing innovation : aims to modify the company's communication methods to reach new targets or change its image. It involves rethinking the 4Ps: price, place, promotion, product.
- Organizational innovation The need to be more efficient by optimizing day-to-day business practices and procedures. In recent years, companies have been innovating with new processes: lean startup, the 4-day week, the agile method.
Innovation means adapting your product and/or your creative methods to today's evolutions. Because even if you have a product that works well at a given moment, it can't guarantee your company's long-term survival. With 1 million start-ups in France today, competition is fierce and innovation is at the very heart of business. Keeping the same type of production, the same organization, the same product without ever changing anything leads to a drop in productivity and competitiveness. Just think: even BIC pens have gone through a series of innovations.
Innovation keeps customers stimulated by your products, maintains loyalty and reaches new targets in the market. If your competitors innovate and improve, they accelerate and eventually overtake you.
# Failure to innovate means the death of the company?
There are many examples of companies that were at the top of their game and suddenly disappeared for lack of innovation. BlockBuster, for example, was number 1 in movie rentals, but disappeared as soon as Netflix entered the market.
It's often difficult to know whether an idea is innovative or not, whether to take the risk of following it or not. The only way to know is to trust in time.
Many companies have proved that if they want to stay relevant, they need to take the innovation plunge in good time.
As a logical consequence, if a company doesn't innovate but others do, it will be completely left behind. You have to be able to bounce back very quickly to catch up, but that's often very difficult.
As we see in this video, when a company doesn't innovate, it tends to disappear completely.
