THE TWELVE PILLARS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Innovation : A Pillar of Entrepreneurship Performance
Is innovation a priority in your startup? It should be.
The only way you survive is you continuously transform into something else. It’s this idea of continuous transformation that makes you an innovation company.
~ Ginni Rometty
Innovation is the crux of a startup’s success. But the innovation process shouldn’t stop after the new product hits the market. Incessant innovation helps startups scale and increases the likelihood of survival.
Innovation as an Entrepreneurship Performance Pillar
The Innovation Pillar is about competitively adapting to the changing needs of the market by continuously enhancing products and services. Performance in the Innovation Pillar boils down to a set of human behaviors related to instituting processes and mindsets that foster innovation.
Often times people confuse performance behavior with the task or the outcome, which can make it difficult to approach development in this area. Below is a graphic that explains the difference between an innovation task (the work that needs to be completed), innovation performance (a collection of behaviors), and the innovation outcome (the end output resulting from the performance behaviors).
What Does High Performance in Innovation Look Like?
Entrepreneurs who are high performers in the Innovation Pillar are curious, challenge the status quo, and embrace conflict. They focus on understanding the customers’ changing needs as well as trends in the industry. They focus on developing creative solutions to customer pain points and gaps in the market.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
-Bill Gates, Microsoft Co-founder
Here are some examples of Innovation behaviors:
- Translate ideas into novel products or ways of working
- Gather customer feedback throughout the innovation process
- Generate methods to rapidly test new ideas
- Experiment with multiple options prior to implementation
Leveraging Teams for High-Performance
In today’s complex world, stellar Innovation requires a diverse team because it enables a startup to bring together unique types of knowledge, skills, and perspectives. For example, at Blackhawke we are constantly innovating our assessments. We create a product by combining knowledge from disparate disciplines; while industrial-organizational psychology is at the heart of everything we do, we believe that by leveraging the knowledge of our team members (which comes from different disciplines) we can take our products to the next level. We’re working on lots of assessment kits behind the scenes so be sure to check back in with us for product reveals!
Conclusion
If you are looking for ways to enhance your performance, start with your innovation processes and efforts. Change is the non-negotiable key to survival.
Check out our next blog to discover how to improve your Innovation Performance.
Have Questions or Need Advice?
At Blackhawke, we have several I-O psychologists with expertise in entrepreneurship performance and performance management. Feel free to schedule a 15-minute consultation; we’d be happy to provide some advice or answer questions, no strings attached!
About Blackhawke Behavior Science
Want to learn more about building a strong entrepreneurial team and healthy organizational culture? Visit Blackhawke’s Medium publication, From I-O to IPO, or www.blackhawke.io and get social with us on Linkedin, Instagram, or Twitter!
