If you’re green you’re growing if you’re ripe you’re rotting. That is to say, if you want to create a better future for yourself or your company, you need to continue innovating and growing… even if you’ve experienced some success in the past. Innovation isn’t easy and not every initiative will succeed, but it beats the alternative which is to become stale and eventually either stall or decline. If you’re looking for ways to create a better future for yourself or your company, then consider these ideas to jump-start innovation.
Go Back to Basics
If you’ve been doing the same thing or selling the same product for years, then it’s possible that you’ve missed some key changes. Go back to basics by assessing your purpose and ask yourself how your product or your life would be different if you were starting from scratch today. You’ll likely discover that there are things that are no longer necessary, and other changes that make sense now that didn’t in the past.
Look at Other Options
It’s easy to become trapped by the “best practices” and ways you’ve always done things. But you can learn something new by looking outside the box and looking at how other people/businesses solve problems. Depending on where you look, you might discover a smarter way to plan, a different way to do it, or a faster or cheaper way to get things done. Don’t be afraid to take the blinders off and look around.
Rethink Your Personal Brand
The perception of success changes over time. Growth, new ideas, failed projects, news stories and many other influences can lead to your goals being very different than they were at the beginning. Take the time to assess your brand and make sure you are presenting the right image to your associates, customers, friends and acquaintances.
Develop and Create
After you’ve completed your personal review, create a plan to re-frame the perception of your business. A key element will be the use of fresh creatives to visually convey who you are. Never forget the importance of creative development to bring a fresh perspective to your business and life, and then integrate that work into campaigns to spread the word. In this situation, you’ll want to leverage printed materials because they give you both flexibility in the presentation of your new messaging and the ability to target almost anyone in the world.
The ideas here will help you get started, but remember that innovation is an ongoing process. You can find further inspiration and examples in an interesting article entitled 10 Places to Find Online Business Ideas by Casandra Campbell. Start with these ideas and then build on them by looking at the world around you and questioning the status quo.