The Innovation Multiplier: Why You Can’t Afford Not To Implement It
Truly effective leaders are visionaries. They don’t dwell on the past; they constantly search for solutions to problems not yet known about. Leaders of influence are imaginative and equipped with an innovation mindset, which is essential for today’s creatives. Executives with vision don’t just push the boundaries of their organization’s limits — they inspire their staff to think as trailblazers of transformation. Xplore co-founder Lisa Rich was able to use this same strategy to harness her team’s innovative potential to realize her grand vision of “space as a service.”
Obstacles Offer Infinite Opportunities
It’s not difficult to imagine the benefits a robust team of creators can deliver. Innovation isn’t about sitting around thinking up new ideas in a vacuum. Modernizers see their goals while carving out the paths to meet them. It’s not enough to merely know the objective — inspirational leaders also see the means to achieve it.
Implementing the strategy of innovation multiplying means the leader’s mind isn’t limited by how things are observed today but, as with the case of Xplore, can be as endless as the vast reaches of space. Rich has continuously shown an awareness of her limitations by building teams that could expand her vision. The human mind’s capacity for imagination is astounding, but a vital component of the innovation multiplier strategy is to harness that imaginative power toward a common goal. Executives who excel at this strategy can enable their teams to visualize a target and create actionable steps to get there.
Salesforce is another company that has repeatedly found success through using the innovation multiplier model — and their revenue reflects the success of this strategy. With both the highest net 5-year sales growth and the highest net 5-year income growth, the success of Salesforce’s innovations is backed by data. It wasn’t done overnight, but the consistent push toward innovation has helped Salesforce become one of the most successful companies today.
Progress involves huge breakthroughs, but those are the exceptions rather than the norm. Instead, advancement often happens in small, incremental units. In sports, world records for running, lifting or jumping aren’t typically smashed — someone sets a new standard, and then the rest of the world trains to beat that standard. Progress comes in the form of seconds and pounds. In much the same way, business innovation comes in small increments. Companies with innovation multipliers can reach those milestones much more quickly.
How To Be An Innovation Multiplier
As we think about business, applying the innovation multiplier effect to the most expensive problems stopping your success is often helpful. In Xplore’s case, one significant impediment was the cost of building and launching a single-purpose satellite. Satellites are incredibly costly to both manufacture and launch. Xplore’s answer to the question of cost was to use a single satellite to accomplish multiple missions through its onboard payload.
Rich and her team didn’t reach that alternative overnight, however. Her staff did it by taking the problem in steps, identifying bottleneck issues preventing scaling, and solving those first. The costs of spacecraft launches are prohibitive, so the team had to be inventive in identifying a better solution. The innovation multiplier strategy led them to create multi-purpose satellites that can simultaneously support multiple missions from multiple customers at the same time. Think Uber for space. This approach overcomes the cost barrier to create multiple revenue streams from each launch.
Additionally, Salesforce’s consistent innovation has provided them with the growth that they have now achieved. It, again, didn’t happen overnight. Adopting an innovation mindset is not a temporary strategy. It requires perseverance and consistency to overcome the roadblocks in your way.
Unlocking Your Team’s Creative Potential
The innovation multiplier concept is all well and good, but how do you practically implement it in your company? One approach is to gather a group of both insiders and outsiders to your business and come up with a list of all the challenges keeping you from scaling. Then, each challenge is assigned a “how to” statement, focusing all that intense creative energy on a viable solution.
At Xplore, that process might have looked like the following statement: “How to reduce the cost and time to launch a satellite?” Framing is key to this strategy. The obstacle is framed as precisely as possible, but the resulting statement leaves room for creative problem-solving. The team isn’t limited in how they approach the problem, just in what they’re approaching. Like a high-powered searchlight, they can hone in on the question and then forge pathways to answers.
An Immediate And Drastic Impact
Outsourcing your innovation to the rest of your team isn’t just good business practice; it’s critical to keeping pace in today’s ever-evolving professional landscapes. Leaders can’t dream up all the good ideas, but if you know how to mobilize your team’s creative potential, you can exponentially solve problems and scale your business. Implementing the innovation multiplier strategy across your operations will have an immediate, drastic impact. You can’t afford not to do it.