A company's innovation activities
By constantly developing innovation activities you can ensure that your products will remain competitive. Create a good framework for your company's innovation activities, such as creativity and a supportive atmosphere. Utilise information about your customers and competitors, the market situation, and new technologies.
The goal of innovation activities is to produce innovations, which are new or considerably improved products or processes. Innovation activity is an important part of your company’s business, as a company's success is generally based on strong products and services.
Innovations can bring a significant competitive advantage and economic growth and strengthen the position of your company on the market. With the help of innovations your company's range of products can expand, the quality of the products can improve, and the modes of operation can improve their efficiency. Innovations can bring savings in costs and enable access to new markets.
Functioning innovation activities can improve the image of your company and attract the best experts to your business. Investors are also interested in innovative businesses.
Innovation activities can bring your business new and useful collaborative networks. Active innovation activities also promote the skills and well-being of your employees, while forcing your business into constant renewal.
Your company's innovation activities should be purposeful and goal-oriented. Make innovation something shared by all and is a part of the everyday activities. Seek to include in it personnel from different levels and areas of expertise in your company. Set aside enough time and resources for innovation activities.
Create an atmosphere in your company that encourages experimentation and the development of new things. Give your employees the necessary amount of freedom. Allow them also to fail and call matters into question. This makes it possible to learn new things.
Keep your employees up to date on what is happening in your company. Make sure that everyone's voice is heard. Seek to arrange things in such a way that your employees trust each other, help each other, an actively share new ideas with each other. The best innovations are often the result of teamwork.
Involve your company's management and supervisors in innovation activities as well. They should support creativity and encourage subordinates to innovate.
Your business should be constantly developing its innovation activities. See to it that people in your company are constantly alert and come up with new ideas.
Constantly collect information about your company's customers and competitors, the market situation, as well as new technologies. Based on the information you will be able to target innovation activities correctly, to resource it sensibly, and to make the development of it a part of your company's strategy.
Get patent information about solutions that were previously developed and develop ways to control this information at different stages of product development. In this way your business will avert unnecessary development work.
Invest in the constant development of the abilities and professional knowledge of your employees, as it will serve as a foundation for the emergence of innovations. Offer your employees incentives or bonuses for good innovations. This this will make them more committed to constant innovation.
Follow the development of the innovation activities of your business using different types of gauges, such as the number of new products or initiatives.
Innovation activities often take place inside your business. However, you more skills and knowledge for innovation can be available from outside your company. You can upgrade the innovation skills of your own company by networking with other companies and actors, for example.
In the development of your company's innovation activities you can also make use of the business services of your own municipality or region, or the services of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland or ELY Centres. You can get funding for the development of innovation activities of your business through Business Finland, ELY Centres or local Leader groups, for example.
In questions of protecting a product or characteristics of a product you can turn to the Finnish Patent and Registration Office. It is also a good idea to acquaint yourself with the Foundation for Finnish Inventions when you need information about innovations. If your business has connections with a university, you might ask innovation experts at the university for help with your innovation activities.
It is a good idea to be persevering when looking for information about innovation activities and product development. Follow the communications of the actors mentioned before, join national development programmes, network, and participate in development events in your field.