Importance Of Innovation In Current Era Of Business

An indispensable ground to start any business is to make profit and growth of revenue over time and innovation is the central subject in economic prosperity. Businesses, whether dealing products or services, are facing transformation like never before. Introduction of new or improved product decides the fate of any company these days. Innovation is the successful introduction of specific novel and useful things. It typically resides in the lap of creative ideas, but is not identical to it. Innovation involves acting on those creative ideas to make some specific and substantial differences in the sphere in which the innovation has been done.
However, just coming up with something that is 'out-of-the box' doesn't mean that it will always work, because, the thing that is required more than just the generation of a creative idea is to put that thought into a process of action to make a visible difference to the product or service that is considered to be innovated. Hence innovation typically involves risk. A key challenge in it is maintaining a specific balance between the process and product. According to this viewpoint, creativity can be typically considered as the basis for innovation, and innovation as the successful implementation of creative base into a tangible product or an intangible service. Innovation can be easily distinguished from invention. As Invention is the conversion of cash into ideas and Innovation is the conversion of ideas into cash.
Innovation can be viewed well in the context of businesses. As every organization has a unique stance to face any challenge or adopt any modernization and this viewpoint differentiates one organization from the other. The success or failure story of any business depends largely on how well a system or culture is managed within an organization. This 'innovative culture' can often be the difference between a 'successful' and a 'not-so-successful' organization. An organization with a well managed innovative culture almost always expands more rapidly than an organization without this understanding.
Consider the success story of Nokia . . . one of the first companies to enter the market for cell phone handsets, now has become the undisputed market leader through its high quality and wide product range, in various countries. Instead of relying on importing products with proven technologies in western markets, it carried out extensive study of its customers, got close interaction with them and developed products based on customer insight. Consequently, we got rid of carrying those heavy huge mobile phones of early days and now we enjoy almost every aspect from listening music & taking pictures to internet surfing in our handsets. But it became possible just through the process started from generating a creative thought to the realistic conversion into a mini-world for all of us, the way we see it now.