Is innovation really innovation when it’s all fluff and no substance?

You can talk the talk about being an ‘innovative’ agency, but unless you have the tools and concrete actions to back up your words, it’s (let’s face it) just bad marketing. You need to be solving a problem, need innovation needs to be actionable.

When it comes to practically implementing ‘innovation’ into your own processes or trying to work it into your clients’, there is always that pressure to do something new. Just about every company wants to to come up with the next big thing that will ‘wow’ everyone and transform an industry. The pressure to ‘innovate’ in this way is especially true for B2B companies– there’s the new client who wants to see that bright and shiny toy, to use the latest thing in e-commerce or digital that will supposedly pull in new customers. This just amplifies the temptation to add steps into an operation; but putting new bits and bobs between points A and B may not enhance but in fact detract from your ultimate goal.

Of course, while new ideas are needed and there are valuable tools to organise yourself in such a way to foster ‘that next big idea’, contrary to popular thought it’s actually better to be focused on reshaping old processes in order to improve efficiencies. It’s not about adding to a process, but stripping it down, combining steps, and removing the extraneous and obsolete.

In reality, often the most innovative action you can take is to remove steps.

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