Innovation may be difficult for CEOs to achieve. They report to stakeholders who demand quick results on financial investments. As a result, CEOs may stick with what’s known rather than look for and test new ideas.
However, this is often the demise of prosperous organisations. Consider the fate of Nokia, Kodak, and Blockbuster. These once thriving businesses are now examples of what complacency can do to a business.
In some ways this reluctance isn’t surprising since businesses often rely on scale. However, as the organisation grows it gets bogged down in complex structures and processes. This often means companies are slower to respond and far less willing to take on risk. Luckily, some CEOs differ greatly.
What Defines Visionary CEOs?
Visionary CEOs are willing to try out new ideas. Innovation is a necessary part of their business. Nonetheless, great CEOs don’t dive into the innovation process blindly.
Plan Innovation
Forward looking CEOs identify challenges, set expectations and objectives, and then look for diverse innovation solutions. They have a compelling vision for the organisation and a willingness to explore new ideas.
Blended Portfolio of Initiatives
Good CEOs don’t put all their eggs in one basket. They realize integration and combinations must occur, since disruption can affect all areas of business. Fortunately, veering away from the traditional siloed method may offer superior performance and better financial value.
Reasonable Expectations
Visionary CEOs also know sometimes things will not go to plan. They are willing to fail, learn, and try again. As Elon Musk stated, “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
To be a great CEO you must loosen or eliminate restrictions, invite new solutions, and expect some failures. The secret is minimizing your losses.
Encourage an Innovation Culture
Creating an innovation culture leads to more in-house ideas and a greater willingness to explore external innovations offered through strategic partnerships. Increased risk tolerance leads to more potential solutions, faster testing, and quicker implementation. Additionally, organisations waste fewer resources since they test often and only invest heavily based on positive results.
Compelling Vision
Great CEOs have a clear vision for the organisation and strong motivational, communication, and collaboration skills. They recognize and bring new opportunities and ideas to the table that can drive growth and success. However, they are also highly reactive and willing to pivot quickly with industry or market changes.
Partnering for Accelerated Innovation
Skilled CEOs often connect with expert partners to pinpoint potentially beneficial technologies. This lightens the load of in-house professionals and increases the scope of possible solutions. The right partner can also identify the best of these for rapid and precise testing and executions.
Luckily, EarlyBirds is the ideal partner if you are a visionary CEO who needs innovation for company success and growth. We offer four pathways and the following benefits:
- Reduced cost of innovation
- Quick increases in innovation capability, when required
- Connections to the best SMEs and innovators available
- Simple process
EarlyBirds Innovation Ecosystem
Our award-winning Innovation Ecosystem earned us the title of Global Open Innovation Platform of the Year 2023. We unite Innovators, Early Adopters, and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to fuel rapid innovative adoption and business evolution.
Early Adopters are leaders such as CEOs eager to identify new and disruptive technologies. They want to seize opportunities, solve business challenges, or create new products and services.
The Ecosystem has a data pool of over 4.8 million global innovations that may already address your organisation’s challenges. Alternatively, organisations can list their challenges and request solutions from innovators.
EarlyBirds Innovation Maps
EarlyBirds can create dynamic global ecosystem maps based on your industry or a technology theme. Each ecosystem map can be used to quickly identify relevant solutions.
Ecosystem maps are individualized for each business and specifically designed with company goals in mind.
EarlyBirds Explorer Program
The Explorer Program is tailored towards those who need innovation as a service to supplement existing innovation programs, or to conduct innovation projects when required.
EarlyBirds Challenger Program
The Challenger Program focuses on a single organisational or technical challenge. It looks for the most relevant innovators that meet your organisational, technical, and risk requirements.
The program is run by an EarlyBirds Subject Matter Expert who identifies your key issues. The SME then searches the data pool to identify and curate options for further evaluation. The most suitable option is chosen and the SME drafts a roadmap of next steps, POC, trial, or implementation.
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EarlyBirds offers efficient, organized, and automated innovation processes. Let us help you streamline workflows and enable cross-functional teams to ensure your organisation can discover, assess, and implement new technologies, seamlessly.
Fortunately, it is not a matter of choosing innovation over tried-and-true strategies either. Today’s companies can maintain traditional methods AND explore innovation. Let us connect you with the right innovators and experts to create a capability edge now.
If you’re interested in exploring business possibilities, please register at https://earlybirds.io/, or contact us to discuss your needs. We’ve helped the Public Sector, Food Industry, Retail, Operations & Maintenance, Manufacturing, Finance & Insurance, Energy, Education, Cybersecurity, and many others.