Growth is vital for any organisation.

In a business, growth is often measured from a shareholder perspective. Business growth means increasing revenues, profits and shareholder value. This will ensure that funds remain available to invest further in the business.

Growth is also important to not for profit and public sector organisations. Here the term growth is often viewed from a ‘user perspective’ and refers to the organisation growing and developing its range of products and services in order to better respond to the changing needs of its users.

In order for this growth to happen, fundraising revenues in the not for profit organisation and government funding for the public sector organisation will usually have to increase.

In a for profit environment, growth is sometimes split into two areas:-

• Non-organic growth – when a company grows by acquiring another business.
• Organic growth - when the organisation grows from within.

Organic growth is generally achieved by increasing the company’s asset base. Viewed at its simplest, this could involve a manufacturing company buying a bigger factory with higher speed production lines, enabling the business to make product more quickly and cheaply. This may help the company grow market share and revenues.

However, nowadays achieving growth often requires more than just investment in bigger plant or tangible assets. Most products and services are knowledge or technology-led.  This means that in order to grow revenues and profits, organisations need to develop their internal resources. These would include the intellectual property, knowledge, skills, experience, and intangible assets such as brands.

Even the manufacturing company mentioned above that invested in a bigger factory would also have to develop its knowledge - of sales and marketing skills, in order to sell the extra products that the bigger factory enables the company to produce.

Organic growth can also be called innovation.

Creativity, Innovation And Growth

Creativity is a key ingredient of innovation and therefore also of organic growth.

Creativity can be defined as an output- when something new emerges. Or it can be defined as a process – engaging in thinking about doing things differently.

Creativity of itself is not enough to make a business grow.

It is innovation that enables businesses to grow organically.

The difference between creativity and innovation is that an innovation is something that actually solves a customer or business problem, which in turn creates value. Customers are willing to pay for innovations that help them solve problems.

The need for businesses and organisations to innovate has grown in importance over the last two decades. This is for a number of reasons.

• Product life cycles have shortened due to the faster pace at which new technologies are emerging.
• Increased competition due to globalisation.
• The context of customers’ lives has changed more rapidly and is increasingly complex. This changed context provides opportunities to develop new products and new services that meet customer needs better.

Business Growth And The Creative Organisation

Creativity and innovation enable the company to clearly differentiate its products from its competitors.

Creative thinking and innovation skills are vital for everyone in an organisation. It is no longer enough to have just the marketing and research and development teams focused on innovation.

A successful organisation for the 21st century needs to have an innovation culture.

An innovation culture is necessary because product innovation and service innovation involve much more than a single creative act.

Innovation requires an iterative creative process. Ideas are generated and then the new product development team go through sequential rounds of creative problem solving until their vision of the product – the one that meets or exceeds customers’ needs - can be delivered.

Indeed, creativity, creative problem solving techniques and creative thinking are required at every step of the way in the innovation process.

Creativity is needed to design effective research processes to uncover customers’ hidden needs. Creativity is needed for idea generation. Creative thinking is needed to solve the problems of product development. Creativity is needed to develop a successful marketing strategy which will reach the target customers and persuade them to try the new product.

Finally, creative thinking is needed to solve the many problems that arise within the organisation due to dealing with a new product. The new product may require a different type of distribution or a different type of customer service support package. Creativity will be needed to generate options and to problem solve implementation.

Sustainable Business Growth

For an organisation to grow consistently and sustainably in the 21^st century, it needs to develop the creativity and knowledge of its people. Nowadays, knowledge and creativity are critical sources of competitive advantage.

Organisations that recognise this and structure their organisation in a way that promotes creativity, and organisations which invest in developing the competences and capabilities of their people are sometimes called ‘learning organisations.’

Business Benefits Of Growth

• Increased revenues and profits.
• Better returns for shareholders.
• Increased funds available for investment in the business and  for rewards

Why Choose Anatellô To Help You Achieve Business Growth?

Our innovation expertise is broad. We understand creativity and innovation and the vital role it can play in growing your business.

We can help you:-

• develop strategy including innovation strategy, so that you can determine your innovation priorities.

• develop an innovation culture, so that your whole organisation is engaged and ready to innovate.

• train your teams in creative thinking skills, facilitation skills or skills for leading innovation, so that your teams have the knowledge and skills to innovate.

• understand what your customers want. This means developing a research and insight programmes that can tap into your customers’ known needs and also their “hidden needs.” In this way your new products and new services will be founded on customer insights will have a greater chance of success.

• help you innovate your business processes to reduce costs and inefficiencies which will improve business profitability

• help you develop new propositions, new products and new services, that will satisfy customers better and generate new revenues.