Organizations who proactively see and act upon the opportunities for change through innovation in a highly volatile business environment will not only survive but will also successfully flourish in the toughest of the economic conditions.

Such companies will use innovation as a technological and a strategic tool to develop agile innovation culture and effective business processes.

With companies taking such bold steps, it will enable them to achieve certain key business outcomes such as:

• Maximizing their Return on Investment to shareholders
• Effectively achieving business growth goals
• Increasing the productivity and thereby increasing the profitability
• Effectively responding to industry disrupters and increasing market share
• Quickly responding to the external challenges by developing human as well as technological resources to do things differently

Here are some ways to make innovation a strategic tool to transform businesses and for overall sustainability.

It is also a powerful tool that enables people to affect the business breakthroughs and also deliver a profound process, a solid system, and culture.

As a result, there would be increased business engagement, competitiveness, and rapid business growth to enable the business to flourish in this current age of disruption.

Being innovate means being willing and competent in knowing how to think and act differently. It is important to know how to think analytically and know how to think at critical levels.

It is also critical to foresee and solve challenges and respond to unprecedented events and external crises in different ways and transform them into creative and innovative solutions that people love and cherish.

One of the main things that one needs to understand about innovation is that it is about how companies perceive and solve challenges in creative ways. There is a need for a sense of urgent passionate purpose to solve complex problems so as to improve the quality of people’s lives and the way we live.

Currently, the entrepreneurship is a global movement, it is now growing in emerging markets, where countries like China and India are leading the pack. Governments have come to a realization that entrepreneurship is a tool of economic success and have now started backing and supporting entrepreneurs. Innovation enables entrepreneurship and it also empowers people to take complete control of their lives and create their own destiny.

Every business goes through a rough patch at some point or the other. However, what is really important is making some really effective strategic moves that help in discovering new and unexplored markets.

Lately, many new businesses are slowly shifting towards using certain strategies that incorporate lean as well as agile methodologies as a way of innovating businesses for creating increased value for customers that they value.

The advancement of digitization, which is enabled by the IoT has synced the connection and sharing of information between multiple digital devices.

It is because of this connectivity and aggregation of data that more revenue streams are getting created, both for new as well as established firms that leverage existing asset in exciting and profitable ways.

It is also changing the basis of competition as companies will now be able to compete as part of the ecosystems. The increasing availability, as well as accessibility to free and low cost online education, is encouraging and enabling almost everyone with a desire for learning. There is a hunger for knowledge to become subject matter experts in their fields.

Innovative entrepreneurs are expanding their business with the internet of things, fully connected mobile devices, cloud computing and via the social media. Especially by developing software applications that are aimed to improve the quality of people’s lives across the globe.

At present, millennials are swapping jobs at increasing rates as they seek more meaningful work and equality. Recruitment processes are also shifting as a lot of recruiters are mostly relying on online-based social processes where reputation is becoming extremely important to professionals and organizations.

Freelancing and contracting are also becoming a way of life, a number of people are working from home and taking responsibility for generating own income and wealth.

They are also operating more from coworking and collaborative work environments, which means to say that they are networking as well as teaming up to share and gain knowledge and experience.

These are some of the factors that are forcing companies to explore innovative strategies to enhance staff engagement, empowerment, acquisition and retention of the best resources.

Major changes are required on how companies perceive their customer’s needs and expectations as they are also empowered by the increasing speed and the wide range of choices available in the strongly connected and digitized world.

Their focus is on getting the value that demonstrates that companies understand as well as empathize with them and even support their lifestyle choices. Increasing consumer expectations, as well as choices, are majorly impacting companies to become more customer-centric via innovative change.

By using human-centered design to improve the user experience, companies can effectively create and invent products and services that people value and cherish.

Currently, the globalization has been driven by policies. This has opened economies locally and internationally, and as a result, many governments are now adopting free-market economic systems, hugely increasing their own productive potential and creating fresh opportunities for international trade.

They are also reducing the barriers to global trade and bringing in new global agreements for promoting trade in goods, services, and investments.

This trend enables true connectivity as well as collaboration to occur. People are now encouraged to develop an internet-based business that helps them using application of lean methodologies.

People are starting low-cost, online-based businesses because of the increasing availability of private funding and simplification of compliance factors and government infrastructures.

Being highly passionate and having an immense necessity making innovation a strategic and powerful tool to impact business breakthroughs, growth and competitiveness enable companies to prosper in this age of disruption.

Many companies in the future will use innovation as a disruptive mechanism to completely outperform its competitors and venture new markets by enhancing customer experiences.