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There are three things that need to mesh if your company’s going to be successful: innovation, a focus on the customer, and teamwork. By following the advice in this SmartBlog on Leadership article, you can make sure each of these three things are working for your business’s success. For example, follow these steps to make sure that your innovation is driving business success:

Monitor. Stay close to the changing needs of your customers. Consistently monitor changes in the marketplace so you can be aware of disruptive technologies, changing business models and new methodologies, processes or services.
Learn. Don’t just monitor changes, understand them. It’s critical that you understand technological and behavioral developments and how these dynamics could affect your industry or customers. Business-to-business organizations are especially prone to being so wrapped up in the status quo that they lose sight of evolving customer needs and expectations; they often fail to adequately adjust, allowing more innovative and nimble players to take root.
Apply. Deliver new value. Whether that means solving a growing problem for your customer, making a service faster and more efficient, or stopping a problem before it starts, you need to consistently evaluate how changes in the marketplace and technological advancements can help your industry and clients in new ways. This is the kind of thinking that helps a business stay relevant. Look to Zipcar; it’s a service that provides rental cars by the hour. Enterprise or Hertz should have been monitoring their customers for insight into how and where people wanted to rent vehicles; they could have been the first to market with such a service if they had a more outward, customer-focused culture and business strategy based on continual innovation.

See the rest at SmartBlog on Leadership.

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