Innovation is an important strategy to help businesses grow.

Businesses of all sizes should take the opportunity to innovate as it’s now a much more holistic approach to solving a problem.

It’s no longer just about bringing out a new high tech product as it could just be improving on existing business processes.

Kristo Shivachev discusses here how his company Simple Design Works helps businesses innovate successfully.

Key considerations for a business innovation are:

• Involve the whole business not just specific teams
• Decide what form of innovation is needed and the timescales required. We discuss four main types here
• Embracing innovation is essential in some cases to remain viable as a business as the Blockbuster example demonstrates
• Things change fast, so talk to your customers and get their feedback
• Use quantitative methods to identify trends and then dig deeper to uncover the reasons why a product may or may not be viable
• Future pace the impact the innovation will have so you’re not redesigning for the sake of it
• Understand that innovation is about managing risks, budgets and timescales
• Adopt a ‘fail-fast’ approach getting hands on as quickly as you can with prototype products
• Getting proof of concept through customer testing is an important milestone in product development
• Optimisation of the product is the next stage in its lifecycle where the emphasis is on refinement
• Fear of failure is a mindset that must be overcome in any innovation project

Martin Hill from Sandler West Midlands asked the questions and the show was produced by Dave Bird in the Small Biz Digital Media studio.