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One of the most important steps a business owner can take is to continuously create innovative
approaches to the way they do business.
Now, a lot of business owners feel that they don't have the time to innovate, but do we
really understand what innovative thinking is and how simple a change can actually be
to create innovation?
That's what I'd like to share with you today, what is innovative thinking?
To understand it properly, we need to first understand what analytical thinking is and
what emotional thinking is.
Analytical thinking is when we go out and we collect data on what's happening in our
business. We might survey staff, survey customers, look at metrics, key performance indicators
and where we can improve our business. Whether it's customer service calling times we can
reduce or any sort of metric that tells us an area for improvement.
Emotional thinking is when a business owner or executive or anyone in the company walks
around the business and has a "feeling" about how the business could be improved. You might
be walking the shop floor and overhear a customer talking about something they think could be
improved in your business or you may walk the floor yourself and have a feeling or thought
that "maybe this could be better in some way".
Now, I know this seems quite fluffy, but when you bring your analytical data together with
your emotional thinking, that's when you open up an opportunity to innovate.
Let me give you an example. I used to own a day spa and hair salon. One of the things
that I brought into the business was to sell flip flops to females after they'd had a pedicure.
This is innovative thinking.
It's a really simple change but something that was extremely appreciated by our clients
but also, very few other spas were actually doing it. And yet, you can buy a pair of flip
flops very cheaply, resell it to your customers and instead of your customers having to sit
for 15-20minutes to make sure they're nails are absolutely perfectly dry, to make sure
their toe nails are not going to smudge at all. You can have them in a pair of flip flops
you've sold to them, you've made some money, they get to walk out of there earlier, everybody's
happy. That's innovative thinking.
Small changes that meet your customers needs and continue to grow your business.
So, take a look around your store or business, what innovative changes can you make that
could be quite simple but will create a big impact?
If you enjoyed this business tip, head over to my blog at trudymurphy.com sign up for
email newsletters or leave me a comment and I look forward to talking to you again soon.