Moving Words – Innovation
Written by Timothy Brady.
“Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.” – Steve Jobs
The road to the future of the moving industry is paved with innovation. However, innovation is much like technology in that every innovation or technological advance is not necessarily a good thing for your business. It must be evaluated to determine its value, not in a general sense, but specifically for your company and operation. Is it going to create efficiency or will it saddle you and your employees with more work – without creating better results?
Here are the questions you need to ask as you evaluate each innovation you are considering for your operation.
- How necessary is the innovation?
- What would happen to your business if it was never brought on board?
- Would it lower or improve customer service?
- How would it affect overall efficiency?
- Would this innovation require you to abandon some other product or service?
- Would it reduce or eliminate any other expenses – or cause other costs to increase or decrease?
- By how much?
- What is the anticipated net cost increase or net savings after implementing?
- Will it increase or decrease the workload of your employees and/or contractors?
Do you and your employees possess the skills necessary to use this innovation to the greatest benefit it advertises?
If not, what’s the necessary learning and training curve for everyone to get up to speed.? - What kind of maintenance requirements are needed to keep it operational?
- How quickly will it become obsolete and need to be replaced with its most recent update?
- What are the other products or services on the market that provide similar results?
Innovation is at the heart of sustainability and growth. However, taking an idea from concept to full use isn’t always easy. And keep in mind, ‘innovation’ doesn’t necessarily mean developing something new from scratch. It can be – and usually is – a fresh perspective on an old method or technology to make it work more efficiently.
The process of taking the leap into innovation is often scary, and requires a certain amount of guts, as well as voluminous amounts of leadership, entrepreneurial spirit and attention to details.
According to Sarah Krasley, Senior Sustainable Lead at Autodesk:
The six additonal innovation questions one needs to ask are:
- What could I look at in a new way? (Steve Jobs looked at the computer in a new way, leading to the Mac and the personal computer revolution.)
- What could I use in a new way? (Paleolithic humans turned fire from a scourge into a means of cooking, heat, light, and protection.)
- What could I recontextualize in space or time? (The Sumerians moved language from spoken to written form, expanding its power and reach.)
- What could I connect in a new way? (Thomas Edison connected the light bulb to the electrical grid, leading to electrified cities.)
- What could I change, in terms of design or performance? (Nearly 3 million years ago, the world’s first “innovator” transformed a simple rock into a stone hand-axe.)
- What could I create that is truly new? (In 1776, American colonists created the first “intentional” nation, based on specific abstract principles.)
In the moving industry, innovation has become an important tool to move into the future. With new regulatory issues such as mandatory Electronic Logging Devices for all OTR trucks and their drivers, it’s going to take some serious innovation to be a valued player in this industry come December 2017.
Best to put on your brainstorming caps now and start creating ideas and procedures that will lead to sustained innovation and growth in this ever-changing industry.
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.” – J.K. Rowling
