If you roll your eyes when you hear about yet another “digital transformation,” we don’t totally blame you. The phrase has been so overused over the past decade that it’s lost all value. Or has it? 

Once you separate hype from semantics, digital transformation is still critically important for manufacturing organizations. Innovation remains the single most valuable practice for maintaining relevance, achieving stability, and growing your business. But so many have tuned out of the discussion due to fatigue from hearing about digital transformation nonstop. Instead of fixating on the concept, what if we refocus the lens to discuss how new digital products and platforms help enterprises in manufacturing and beyond reinvent themselves? Let’s start by answering three core questions most will have while on the precipice of evolution: 

How can you generate momentum and execute truly transformative work while ensuring your core business operates smoothly?

Most manufacturing enterprises tend to innovate in bursts. These efforts make an impact for a short period of time before the process must be repeated to create another fleeting moment of progress. Innovating this way is costly, risky, and difficult to scale. There’s downtime between these bursts and potential for missed opportunities. True momentum cannot happen at a stop-go pace. 

Adopting a business model of sustained innovation makes it possible for enterprises to explore, execute, and scale new ideas on a continuous basis without disrupting their core operations. Employing an ROI-driven framework like our Innovation OS model for operationalized assessment, deployment, and measurement of innovative concepts helps the entire process run smoother, ensures that innovation initiatives align with strategic priorities, provides visibility into resources, and minimizes risk. 

How can you embrace emerging tech to rethink your business model?

Cutting-edge technology will inevitably play a role in your innovation-led business model. However, much like digital transformation, emerging technology has fallen victim to the buzzword treatment. The hype and overinflated expectations surrounding certain tools has caused many to approach emerging technologies skeptically or overzealously. 

Too often, organizations get swept up in trend chasing or pressure to keep up with their competitors and adopt unnecessary or ineffective tools for their specific needs. Instead, businesses need to match technology to their objectives, not build their goals around whichever solution they’ve invested in. You wouldn’t build a new house because you bought a hammer; you’d buy the hammer because you needed it to help you build the house. Technology is a tool and should be treated as such. 

Remain rooted in business value when considering which solutions to add to your arsenal, and allow your objectives, pain points, and opportunities to guide your exploration and plans. 

How can you prepare your organization for this change and what unexpected consequences can you begin preparing for today?

But new technology and processes must be met with internal support to be successful, and no business that excels at sustained innovation got there without investing time, effort, and resources into reshaping their culture. As you evolve your business model, processes, and approach to innovation, you can almost certainly expect pushback and hesitation. To get your people on board, be clear about what innovation means to your organization and the role your people play in moving your vision forward. It won’t happen overnight, but make your people active participants in your new approach to innovation from day one. Communication will be key for generating support and shifting your organization’s mindset to not only embrace innovation, but hunger for it. 

Of course, we all wish we could know for certain what consequences will result from our actions before we take them. The best you can do is structure your business model in a way that is built to sustain potential blows by having the proper infrastructure to fail smaller and rebound faster.

Say goodbye to buzzwords and focus instead on bigger picture impacts. If you’re ready to begin your journey towards impactful, measurable, and repeatable innovation, check out this ebook.