Three laws to maintain the vitality of innovation

I think almost every enterprise should know very well that innovation can determine their success or failure: if it is hard to sustain the pace of innovation, then it will decline, and the vitality of innovation forever will endure. But according to Douglas Merrill, founder and CEO of ZestFinance, the financial services technology firm in the United States, companies can basically stay alive and innovate as long as they can do three things. It is worth mentioning that, this person was former Google's chief information officer (CIO), vice president of engineering.

The following is his view on business innovation:

Nearly 66% of the Fortune 100 top 100 companies in 1990 were "unnamed" for more than 20 years. So some people can not help but ask, in the end what causes them to decline from prosperity? Although the "Fortune" top 100 companies are generally smart and competent entrepreneurs in charge of, but those who failed to get listed on the list of companies, I There is only one reason for this: they did not innovate and did not open up new markets.

In my career, I talked about the history of innovation with entrepreneurs around the world. When we talk about the concept of innovation, I almost always get the same question: is there a way for a big big company to have in-depth innovation? How can a company find a disruptive innovation? My answer is yes, but Whether it is a long-established big brand or a fledgling start-up company, they can always maintain their innovative vitality by following the three laws.

Article 1: Cooperate with people you do not like / do not like to maintain the diversity of your team

Numerous studies show that people with diverse portfolios tend to come up with more diverse types of solutions and, therefore, are more likely to find successful ideas. And vice versa: If the team members you build are the same, the same looks and the same shoes, then no surprises, "brainstorming," the result is only one answer, you can only hope that this idea can be successful.

In my opinion, this is simply the root cause of the disaster. So how do you ensure you do not have a team that does things and think alike? Although almost all businesses have come up with some kind of diversification strategy, unfortunately many of them just made plans and did not In practice.

According to social psychology, we tend to like those who have similarities with us, and the more commonplace, the more likely you are to love this person. From this we can conclude that it is best to recruit people you do not like. As long as they are smart and thoughtful, these people are exactly the diverse representatives your company needs.

Article 2: Do not simply copy the surface phenomenon of success

In this world, there is a complete workshop-style industry dedicated to teaching you how to be creative. The reason why this industry can exist is because innovation is easy to be blown out of hype. You hear about innovation in everything, from the need for brainstorming to the importance of free lunch to employees.

These ideas are superficial because they only point to the surface features of a certain behavior. In other words, they just tell you what you did and why you did it. For example, in my previous Google service, the company provided its employees with free lunches every day because it allowed for introverts (engineers) to easily discuss what they were doing with their colleagues and talk about huge differences Creative.

We do not treat it as a place to eat, but a place to chat. Of course, this once again highlights the importance of recruiting people you do not like because lunch is a great place for people to express their opinions. Do not copy this superficial behavior, to understand your goals, and to achieve these goals within your ability. In other words, given the culture and diversity of your company, is there any better way for people who do not work together to talk to each other?

Third: Listen and tap the user's needs, rather than simple obedience

Finally, once you've recruited people you do not like for your team's diversity, you have to create the conditions for communication between them and you need to get them to do meaningful work. You become an important hurdle to your team's innovation because you are a high-powered, self-aware customer who understands everything you need.

However, the purpose of innovation is not just to develop new things, but to win new customers, new markets or new products. Although you think you know the needs of your clients well, you do not. Instead, you know the needs of your customers just at the beginning of the company, but now only the customer really knows what you need.

Even so, how can we tap the needs of our clients? My advice is to set up "focus groups." Although focus groups are not generally equivalent to real clients, it is also true that people can not say what they do not know. Henry Ford once said, "If I were to ask customers what they wanted then, they would surely tell me: 'A faster horse.'" His client knew only the horse at the time, I do not know.

In many cases, you can really understand the needs of your clients only by observing their behavior. For example, we recently optimized our website to make it more mobile friendly. Instead of asking for it on our part, we found that about 15% of our users interact with our website through their mobile devices, and we found that from the data. I think users did not ask such a question, because they simply do not know that we can develop an application, significantly improve their mobile experience.

This example just shows that we are not for innovation and innovation, but to solve customer practical problems and innovation. Although I am not sure that the three laws above guarantee that your business will last forever, there is little doubt that ignoring them will certainly increase the probability of your failure.

This article is compiled from FastCompany

(Qing Chen)