Technology innovation enables businesses to stay ahead of competitors, meet customer demand, and enter new markets. Disruptive technologies such as virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and IoT (Internet of Things) can streamline operations, improve customer experiences, and help businesses reduce costs.
The best tech innovations are ones that are a good fit for the company’s overall strategy. They should also be easy to implement, offer measurable results, and have the potential to scale over time.
Aligning technology with business strategy ensures that investments in new tools support overarching goals like reducing operational costs, improving customer experience, and accelerating time to market. It’s also important to set clear use cases for tech innovation to avoid falling victim to hype and to ensure that every initiative ties back to the organization’s core value proposition.
Developing a strategy that includes a mixture of both disruptive and progressive innovation can be an effective approach to finding success with new technology. Progressive innovation is when a new tool changes the way that a company does something without changing its fundamental processes or products.
For example, a CAD software solution is a progressive improvement that has helped simplify engineering processes, reduce errors, and speed up the design process. Conversely, a 3D printer is a disruptive innovation that offers a unique ability to create custom parts on-demand and at a fraction of the cost. These advances can be leveraged in multiple industries such as healthcare for prototyping prosthetics and organs, agriculture for optimizing plant growth, and manufacturing to create lightweight components.