Image by Ross Mayfield

Innovation is a fascinating topic. I was discussing it in some detail with a friend a few days ago. We were talking about a particular business that wanted to bring about organizational change. The company is an SME that has been expanding rapidly due to an explosive growth in it’s segment. They now want to become an ‘employer of choice’ in their particular segment. When we delved into some of the inner workings of the business, I realized that the business had to seriously fix some fundamental structural issues before it went out to achieve challenging goals such as becoming an ‘employer of choice’. My primary concern was that the business had outsourced most of the production of its product, and had hence left itself vulnerable to attack from competitors on multiple fronts.

This concern was further compounded by the fact that innovation within the firm had come to a standstill, and their product slowly becoming an easily replicated commodity. Given the state of current affairs, my advice to the company was to boost R&D funding and develop processes that would help them elicit feedback from their top customers. I have seen this scenario play out time and time again at SMEs who are currently in a boom cycle and channel their resources away from their core competencies. Goals such as becoming an ‘employer of choice’ are important admittedly, but certain processes take priority over others until a business has created a strong foot holding in its industry.

What do you think? Given the circumstances should they pursue the goal of becoming an ‘employer of choice’, or should they focus on developing a stronger innovation culture within the business? A hybrid model combining both goals could also be proposed. Look forward to your comments and suggestions.