How to unleash innovation in 2022 and beyond

Businesses are embracing digital transformation faster than ever before. Two of the main drivers have been the coronavirus and growing environmental concerns — the former accelerated uptake as organisations looked for ways to ensure continued operations during the pandemic, while the latter is helping businesses move towards sustainability goals, such as zero carbon.

Research has revealed that 85% of businesses plan to increase their investment in digital transformation in 2022 and beyond. This will help them improve operational sustainability, agility, and resilience by unlocking the performance benefits of automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics in what Aveva calls the Age of Performance.

However, digital technologies can help in another important way. Starting right now, they can transform how we innovate.

Digitalisation supports innovation

Digital-first strategies support inclusivity and diversity of thought by allowing larger, more varied groups of people to get involved. This in turn generates more ideas and builds stronger relationships.

Take the concept of swarming, which originates from the world of agile development. This is when a team member with a problem raises their hand to ask for help from the hive mind. Everyone stops what they’re doing and converges on the problem until a solution is solved.

Collaboration tools enable a swarm to go digital, with someone ‘virtually’ raising their hand to indicate a need for help. This can improve productivity by eliminating bottlenecks more quickly, making the most of your employees’ knowledge and experience, no matter where they’re based.

Another great way to tap into the hive mind is hackathons, as competitions are well known to incentivise innovative thinking.

Hackathons are often looked upon as physical events specifically for technical teams, but they can be so much more. Today’s digital tools enable you to channel that energy in online spaces and consequently, to expand events to include employees in every country that a business operates in. Such an expansion increases the number and variety of ideas produced.

Hackathons are great fun, and create space for employees to try something new, or dive into their passion projects. It’s a chance to escape from their regular work, stretching their talents in a different way.

Plus, aside from the obvious business and customer benefits, they’re also great platforms for staff recognition. As a way to celebrate employees’ ingenuity, these events are clearly a win-win for all involved as winners get to go home with prizes, while the company gets new ideas to potentially take to market.

Adopt short-cycle innovation processes

Organisations can also drive innovation through the use of digitally accelerated short cycles.

In the past businesses would meet with a client to discuss ideas then go away and complete a project before presenting it to the customer weeks or months later. The process stifled innovation as there was no space to bounce around ideas.

In today’s business environment the most successful enterprises are those that constantly innovate and loop into an ongoing feedback cycle. It’s important to get something in front of customers as soon as possible to begin the process of response, modification, and adjustment. Digital tools are great for keeping communication channels open and supporting continuous innovation.

Digital transformation can enable everything from virtual site walkthroughs to cloud-based demonstrations that shorten feedback cycles and speed up the exchange of ideas. This enables projects to not only be completed more quickly, but potentially evolve and advance, thanks to the ongoing flow of ideas between all those involved.

Simple ideas can reap big rewards

‘Lightbulb’ moments can often be sparked by simple conversations or chance encounters with colleagues. However, opportunities for these have shrunk thanks to the pandemic and the move to remote, and now hybrid, working.

They may not be the easiest to emulate online, but virtual ‘water cooler moments’ are far from impossible and many companies are encouraging staff to start ‘virtual hallway’ conversations. These turned out to be a simple but effective way to introduce another opportunity for innovation back into organisations as remote and hybrid working has grown.

By simply ‘dropping in’ on colleagues via an unscheduled video call, staff can continue to have those informal chats. One of these just might lead to the next big idea.

Power up innovation through digitalisation

The growth of digital innovation may have come out of the pandemic, but the benefits it has brought businesses means that it’s here to stay.

Just as the pandemic proved that remote working is possible at large scale, it has also shown us how digitalisation can pay a rich innovation dividend. At AVEVA alone, during the pandemic digital innovation led to more than 600 ideas from a global hackathon, 20 patent submissions and several product launches.

Digitalisation supports inclusivity and diversity, which in turn powers up innovation. In this era of the connected worker, the integration of new digital technologies looks set to unlock many new opportunities to collaborate and innovate. We can’t wait to see what great ideas your staff will come up with next!

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