As the corporate agenda shifts from growth to preservation mode, the natural reaction is to cut budgets to reduce costs or trim prices to retain customers.
Innovation initiatives, which are typically associated with long-term value creation and generally lacking agreed measurement metrics, may be viewed as too costly in a time like this, and therefore dispensable. Ironically, a closer examination of one of these hard-earned cents—let’s call it the innovation coin—shows that a steady and strategic approach to innovation can deliver high performance in spite of, and even because of, an economic downturn.
On the “heads” side, organizations can achieve critical cost reductions by consistently treating innovation as a business discipline. On the “tails” side, these same enterprises can realize customer retention and acquisition initiatives by creatively applying innovations to satisfy customers and meet their evolving needs.
And on the whole, innovation can enable an organization to differentiate itself from the competition, which is valuable at any time in the business cycle but even more imperative now. No matter how the coin is viewed, a continued commitment to innovation will help keep an organization resilient during this current cycle and better poised for the times ahead.