Innovation Isn’t Always The Big Things

When we talk about innovation, people instantly start talking about self-driving cars, colonising mars and virtual reality hardware. Sure — that’s innovation, but why are we always focusing on the big things? Rather than thinking big, start by thinking small.

Innovation as a word doesn’t mean big, drastic changes; it just means something new. When thinking about innovation, I see it as anything new that makes a positive change.

Innovation is defined simply as a ‘new idea, device, or method’

When you begin to think about innovating, you can start with yourself. How can you process your e-mail more efficiently? How can you maximise your output? Are there tasks you can automate? Assess the processes and methods you use, then innovate. Saving yourself hours per day may not get you the notoriety that comes with huge innovations, but you’ll thank yourself.

Innovation starts with you.

I realised that I was spending at least 30 minutes a day chasing people up, whether it be for feedback or invoices. As I’ve learned to loathe unneeded tasks, my search for a solution began. Stumbling upon Boomerang (www.boomeranggmail.com), a tool for gmail that lets you schedule chase up emails, gave me the solution I was after. Now, each time I send an e-mail that asks the recipient for an action, I schedule a follow up e-mail that automatically sends if they don’t reply.

Innovating small doesn’t just apply to you though, it can make huge differences in your businesses. Let’s look at a shipping company that I worked with as an example.

When I began talking to this shipping company, they described the process of how they audit cargo ships. An engineer would be on board, begin cycling around the ship (they’re massive) to survey it’s condition, when they spotted a problem (such as a crack), they would cycle back to their office (up to 25 minutes away), boot up some old software (that took 10 minutes to load), find the problem in the manual, print out instructions to fix it, cycle back to the problem and then carry out the fix. For each problem, the process could take up to 1 hour — without the fix even being implemented. Imagine the amount of time wasted travelling and using old software! As we begin to discuss the problem, we came across some instant solutions that could save ridiculous amounts of time; one of which was to give the engineers tablets with the manuals installed. Implementing a simple solution like that would erase at least 50 minutes of travel time. A change like that may not save the world, but as each day goes by those 50 minutes will add up, saving the business time and ultimately, money.

It’s important when we talk about innovation that we don’t just focus on world changing initiatives. We can all innovate every single day. I bet if you took a look at your day or your business, you could instantly find something to innovate.

Start thinking small and get innovating!