Innovation in business

Innovation in business

Read a blog post about being innovative in business to practise and improve your reading skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then read the text and do the exercises.

Preparation

Reading text

What does it mean to be innovative in business?

In order for a business to survive in today's world, it is important that we regularly review what we are doing and how we are doing it. By considering new ideas and new ways of doing things, and trying to innovate, we can improve on our products/services, increase sales, reduce costs and make our processes more effective and efficient. Innovation is key to increasing profits.

There are several ways a company can be innovative with their products and services. Today we will look at four of them.

1. Using the latest technology to improve your product/service

When we think of innovation, we often think of new technologies. While they might be impressive, we should not use new technologies just because they are available. It is important to consider how the technology can improve our product/service and make a difference to our customer. Companies that produce cars, toiletries, household appliances, etc. often have a large R&D department to work on making their products better.

2. Responding to customer demands by changing what is on offer

By listening to customer feedback, we can get their opinions on how we are doing and find out about what it is that they want. We also need to be aware of changes in customer demands and keep up with the times. When fast-food restaurant McDonald's realised that the market wanted healthier choices, they introduced fruit and salads, while removing the 'super-size' option from their menus.

3. Offering a new product/service to reach new customers

Your business might be doing well, but there is no growth or development and there is a risk that your competitors might take away some of your customers. Innovation sometimes means developing a new product that targets a different market. Although video games were often played by boys, in 2006, video games giant Nintendo introduced the game console Nintendo Wii, successfully targeting girls and older customers with games like Cooking Mama and Brain Training.  

4. Changing the way you provide a service

By looking at the changes to the customer's lifestyle and needs, we sometimes realise that there might be better ways to serve them. Customers who do not have a lot of time might prefer to have their food or their shopping delivered to their homes, or they might like to do their banking online rather than in an actual bank.

Not all innovation will bring success to our businesses, but it can give us the opportunity to grow and learn more about what we do and what our customers might want.

Discussion

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Average: 4.4 (49 votes)

Submitted by DULGUUN2005 on Sat, 19/11/2022 - 10:47

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Finding good personalized things in my life and feeling good about spending money for product is one of the best feeling. I love new innovation such as product improvements greatly affect our lives. My phone service company gives best deal for unlimited data since I can choose speed and how many hours I need.

Submitted by farhadwahaj on Thu, 08/09/2022 - 06:12

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Early, we used to use the world and excel for dating collection and reporting. However, after 2011 we are using technology such as ODK, CMORE, and FULCRUM for data collection and reporting. in the past, we receive a report after weeks of data collection, while the defects of discrepancies vanish in the field, but using the technology we have got the date of the project on the same day on which field staff does the inspection.

Submitted by ivanricardo07 on Thu, 25/08/2022 - 01:45

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The products/services updated with newest technologies that I have been testing are iPhone 13 Pro max, and the earphones called Beats Fit Pro which was manufactured by Apple´s brand noun Beats. These devices have an outstanding performance, and we can carry out a lot of multimedia tasks quickly on them.

Submitted by Nandar Su Hlaing on Fri, 19/08/2022 - 09:32

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As a latest innovation products/services that I used, like laptop or mobile phone, shopping applications those are useful, saving times, efficient, can make me comfortable using these things. I can connect the people who are living around the world. My family members are living different places, using these things we can connect easily. We aren't feeling that we are living away.

Submitted by Amoon_96 on Wed, 03/08/2022 - 13:52

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I think we need these tips to improve ourselves as well, It is so useful if you want to search for a job and you want to service to pay for you, you need to learn how to market your services.

Submitted by jyoti Chaudhary on Mon, 30/05/2022 - 12:58

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What are some of the latest innovations in the products/services that you use?

I always see my customer need. it is very important to check your customer's needs for what they want and according to the customer's needs, you can do it. The second thing is the budget. many times our customers do not take our product because of high rate. always understand your customer budget.

Submitted by Laxsus on Sun, 13/03/2022 - 18:18

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Paying my bills online is really useful to me

Submitted by LamVanPhuong on Mon, 08/11/2021 - 10:18

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actually i don't usually keep up with the innovation in the world because my economy doesn't allow it

Submitted by Suraj paliwal on Sun, 17/10/2021 - 18:01

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Many new innovations are come up. As I payment money online,
Cryptocurrency, and online classes are most recent innovation.

Submitted by Dariusz on Sun, 29/08/2021 - 19:20

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The latest innovation in the product/service I have used is a payment by phone. It's very convinient and efficient way to pay for goods at the shop or while an online shopping.