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The 7 Best Business Plan Examples (2024)

As an aspiring entrepreneur gearing up to start your own business , you likely know the importance of drafting a business plan. However, you might not be entirely sure where to begin or what specific details to include. That’s where examining business plan examples can be beneficial. Sample business plans serve as real-world templates to help you craft your own plan with confidence. They also provide insight into the key sections that make up a business plan, as well as demonstrate how to structure and present your ideas effectively.

Example business plan

To understand how to write a business plan, let’s study an example structured using a seven-part template. Here’s a quick overview of those parts:

• Executive summary: A quick overview of your business and the contents of your business plan.
• Company description: More info about your company, its goals and mission, and why you started it in the first place.
• Market analysis: Research about the market and industry your business will operate in, including a competitive analysis about the companies you’ll be up against.
• Products and services: A detailed description of what you’ll be selling to your customers.
• Marketing plan: A strategic outline of how you plan to market and promote your business before, during, and after your company launches into the market.
• Logistics and operations plan: An explanation of the systems, processes, and tools that are needed to run your business in the background.
• Financial plan: A map of your short-term (and even long-term) financial goals and the costs to run the business. If you’re looking for funding, this is the place to discuss your request and needs.

7 business plan examples (section by section)

In this section, you’ll find hypothetical and real-world examples of each aspect of a business plan to show you how the whole thing comes together. 

• Executive summary

Your executive summary offers a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. You’ll want to include a brief description of your company, market research, competitor analysis, and financial information. 

In this free business plan template, the executive summary is three paragraphs and occupies nearly half the page:

• Company description

You might go more in-depth with your company description and include the following sections:

• Nature of the business. Mention the general category of business you fall under. Are you a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer of your products?
• Background information. Talk about your past experiences and skills, and how you’ve combined them to fill in the market. 
• Business structure. This section outlines how you registered your company —as a corporation, sole proprietorship, LLC, or other business type.
• Industry. Which business sector do you operate in? The answer might be technology, merchandising, or another industry.
• Team. Whether you’re the sole full-time employee of your business or you have contractors to support your daily workflow, this is your chance to put them under the spotlight.

You can also repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, Instagram page, or other properties that ask for a boilerplate description of your business. Hair extensions brand Luxy Hair has a blurb on it’s About page that could easily be repurposed as a company description for its business plan. 

• Market analysis

Market analysis comprises research on product supply and demand, your target market, the competitive landscape, and industry trends. You might do a SWOT analysis to learn where you stand and identify market gaps that you could exploit to establish your footing. Here’s an example of a SWOT analysis for a hypothetical ecommerce business: 

You’ll also want to run a competitive analysis as part of the market analysis component of your business plan. This will show you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to gain an edge over the competition. 

• Products and services

This part of your business plan describes your product or service, how it will be priced, and the ways it will compete against similar offerings in the market. Don’t go into too much detail here—a few lines are enough to introduce your item to the reader.

• Marketing plan

Potential investors will want to know how you’ll get the word out about your business. So it’s essential to build a marketing plan that highlights the promotion and customer acquisition strategies you’re planning to adopt. 

Most marketing plans focus on the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. However, it’s easier when you break it down by the different marketing channels . Mention how you intend to promote your business using blogs, email, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing. 

Here’s an example of a hypothetical marketing plan for a real estate website:

Logistics and operations

This section of your business plan provides information about your production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.

Financial plan

The financial plan (a.k.a. financial statement) offers a breakdown of your sales, revenue, expenses, profit, and other financial metrics. You’ll want to include all the numbers and concrete data to project your current and projected financial state.

In this business plan example, the financial statement for ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy includes forecasted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.

It then goes deeper into the financials, citing:

• Funding needs
• Project cash-flow statement
• Project profit-and-loss statement
• Projected balance sheet

You can use Shopify’s financial plan template to create your own income statement, cash-flow statement, and balance sheet. 

Types of business plans (and what to write for each)

A one-page business plan is a pared down version of a standard business plan that’s easy for potential investors and partners to understand. You’ll want to include all of these sections, but make sure they’re abbreviated and summarized:

• Logistics and operations plan
• Financials 

A startup business plan is meant to secure outside funding for a new business. Typically, there’s a big focus on the financials, as well as other sections that help determine the viability of your business idea—market analysis, for example. Shopify has a great business plan template for startups that include all the below points:

• Market research: in depth
• Financials: in depth

Your internal business plan acts as the enforcer of your company’s vision. It reminds your team of the long-term objective and keeps them strategically aligned toward the same goal. Be sure to include:

• Market research

Feasibility 

A feasibility business plan is essentially a feasibility study that helps you evaluate whether your product or idea is worthy of a full business plan. Include the following sections:

A strategic (or growth) business plan lays out your long-term vision and goals. This means your predictions stretch further into the future, and you aim for greater growth and revenue. While crafting this document, you use all the parts of a usual business plan but add more to each one:

• Products and services: for launch and expansion
• Market analysis: detailed analysis
• Marketing plan: detailed strategy
• Logistics and operations plan: detailed plan
• Financials: detailed projections

Free business plan templates

Now that you’re familiar with what’s included and how to format a business plan, let’s go over a few templates you can fill out or draw inspiration from.

Bplans’ free business plan template

Bplans’ free business plan template focuses a lot on the financial side of running a business. It has many pages just for your financial plan and statements. Once you fill it out, you’ll see exactly where your business stands financially and what you need to do to keep it on track or make it better.

PandaDoc’s free business plan template

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is detailed and guides you through every section, so you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. Filling it out, you’ll grasp the ins and outs of your business and how each part fits together. It’s also handy because it connects to PandaDoc’s e-signature for easy signing, ideal for businesses with partners or a board.

Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template

Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template helps you map out the essentials of your business, like partnerships, core activities, and what makes you different. It’s a collaborative tool for you and your team to learn how everything in your business is linked.

Better business planning equals better business outcomes

Building a business plan is key to establishing a clear direction and strategy for your venture. With a solid plan in hand, you’ll know what steps to take for achieving each of your business goals. Kickstart your business planning and set yourself up for success with a defined roadmap—utilizing the sample business plans above to inform your approach.

Business plan FAQ

What are the 3 main points of a business plan.

• Concept. Explain what your business does and the main idea behind it. This is where you tell people what you plan to achieve with your business.
• Contents. Explain what you’re selling or offering. Point out who you’re selling to and who else is selling something similar. This part concerns your products or services, who will buy them, and who you’re up against.
• Cash flow. Explain how money will move in and out of your business. Discuss the money you need to start and keep the business going, the costs of running your business, and how much money you expect to make.

How do I write a simple business plan?

To create a simple business plan, start with an executive summary that details your business vision and objectives. Follow this with a concise description of your company’s structure, your market analysis, and information about your products or services. Conclude your plan with financial projections that outline your expected revenue, expenses, and profitability.

What is the best format to write a business plan?

The optimal format for a business plan arranges your plan in a clear and structured way, helping potential investors get a quick grasp of what your business is about and what you aim to achieve. Always start with a summary of your plan and finish with the financial details or any extra information at the end.

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5 Effective Steps to Creating a Powerful Innovation Strategy

Updated on: 1 March 2023

Innovation is an organization’s path to survival. In a world of rapid change and increasing competition, innovation has become essential to maintaining business growth, competitiveness, and productivity.  

Innovation is one of the key activities in a company’s operations. Innovation is a long and complex process that takes an abstract idea and converts it into a successful product or service. A proper strategy in place to execute it ensures that you do it well. 

In this post, we are exploring 5 effective steps for developing a powerful innovation strategy.

What is an Innovation Strategy

“Innovation transforms insight and technology into novel products, processes and services that create new value for stakeholders, drive economic growth and improve standards of living.”

In the simplest of terms, innovation is the process of bringing new, unique, and creative ideas into reality. An organization following an innovation strategy uses innovation to execute its business strategy. In other words, an innovation strategy guides the process of resource allocation, enabling the organization to achieve its long-term goals through the use of innovation.  

“An innovation strategy guides decisions on how resources are to be used to meet a firm’s objectives for innovation and thereby deliver value and build competitive advantage.” – Mark Dodgson, David Gann, Ammon Salter (The Management of Technological Innovation: Strategy and Practice)

A company’s innovation strategy should specify how the different types of innovation fit into the business strategy and the resources that should be allocated to implement these innovations.

An innovation strategy paves the way to 

• Improve the ability to retain customers 
• Reduce competitive intensity
• Improve product or service performance  
• Increase the chances of becoming a market leader 
• Preserve bargaining power in an ecosystem and blunt imitators

Types of innovation

• Gradual/ incremental innovation (continuous innovation) is based on abilities that can be easily learned and developed in an organization and has a low-risk low return. 
• Radical innovation (discontinuous innovation) on the other hand may change the structure of an industry dramatically and has a high-risk high return. 

Innovation Matrix

The innovation matrix as introduced by VIIMA helps categorize innovation based on two dimensions; the technology it uses and the market it operates in. It, thus, visualizes the most common types of innovation.

Based on these categories, three major types of innovation an innovation strategy can be based on can be identified, 

• Product innovation; occurs in the development of new products, modifications in established products, or in the usage of new materials or components in the manufacture of established products
• Process innovation; refers to the development of and implementation of significantly improved organizational processes through the integration of new technologies
• Business model innovation; refers to the improvements done to an existing business model or the creation of a new one to better meet the needs of customers

The Innovation Value Chain 

The innovation value chain provides a framework to identify which innovation approach makes the most sense for a company to adopt. It enables managers to find the company’s weaknesses and become more aware of an apt approach to implement for success. 

The framework includes three phases 

• Idea generation ; creating and sourcing new ideas from internal and external environments to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
• Conversion ; selecting and screening the best idea and implementing them. While this involves transforming knowledge into innovations in the form of new products, processes, or organizational forms, special focus should be placed on the company budget and strict funding criteria to avoid shutting down the development of the idea. 
• Diffusion ; spreading the idea across the organization. Find the relevant communities in the organization to support and spread the new product or service, process, and practices across geographic location, consumer groups, and channels. 

How to Develop an Innovation Strategy 

Determine the innovation strategy objective .

Developing an innovation strategy should start with understanding the reason behind developing one in the first place or the objectives you want to achieve by implementing it. 

To identify your innovation strategy objectives, examine the overall business objectives that help the company achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This will clear the path for your innovation strategy as it should eventually support the overarching goals of the organization.

Get the executive team onboard 

Engage the leadership team in dialogue and ensure that they are aware of the innovation objectives established and what it means for them as well as the future of the organization. During the discussions also identify, 

• External changes that could be occurring at present and in the future as a result of innovation 
• The implication of such changes on the company 
• Scope of innovation; identifying opportunities for innovation, whether to improve existing products or services or introduce brand new products to new markets
• Business outcomes; financial results, social impact, new economic models, market leadership,  etc. 
• The gaps that must be closed to deliver the chosen innovation scope, especially in terms of processes, skills, and resources needed and company culture
• Barriers to and enablers of the innovation strategy.  Barriers can come in the form of embedded beliefs on how the business should operate and enablers can show up as core capabilities or resources.  

Their involvement is necessary to create a shared vision of success with innovation at the core.

Gather customer insight 

Understanding customer needs will inform the direction of the development of the innovation idea. It will also enable you to formulate a strategy that works and create value-creating innovations that will ultimately generate a good return on investment.

In order to create value for potential customers with your innovation strategy, you need a thorough understanding of your market and the customer segment you are catering to. 

(Utilize a customer persona to gather insight on customers’ demographic characteristics, needs, challenges, and ambitions and apply that knowledge to generate a solution.)

Allocate resources 

When allocating resources for new areas for growth and renewal, reserving resources for the core business growth should also be taken into consideration. By conducting a comprehensive audit on the current innovation landscape of the organization you can determine and understand how much time, effort, and money are allocated to different innovation initiatives. 

The Harvard Business Review has introduced the Innovation Ambition Matrix to determine how to allocate resources based on the type of innovation initiative.

The matrix describes 3 types of innovation and how resources should be split among them,  

• Core initiatives – refer to efforts to make incremental changes to existing products and incremental inroads into new markets. For example, through new packaging or added service convenience. Such efforts can draw on resources the company already has. 
• Transformational initiatives – refer to creating new offers to serve new markets and customer needs. This may require assets the company is unfamiliar with. 
• Adjacent innovations – involves leveraging something the company does well into a new space. This type of innovation allows a company to draw on existing capabilities but necessitates putting those capabilities to new uses.

Research conducted by HBR shows that companies that allocated about 70% of resources to core initiatives, 20% to adjacent ones, and 10% to transformational ones outperformed their peers.

However, the right balance will vary from company to company and according to factors such as industry, competitive position, and the company’s stage of development.

To learn more about striking and maintaining the right balance between the allocation of resources and the innovation initiative, refer to this article here.

Develop an innovation system 

Not all organizations are likely to possess the capabilities to execute successfully at all three levels of innovation ambitions identified above.

However, HBR emphasizes that the companies that have got it right, have usually focused on five key areas of management that help them excel at the three levels of innovation ambition, and hence enable them to maintain a sustainable innovation system with the organization. 

• Talent : includes the skills needed to execute core, adjacent, and transformational innovation initiatives. 
• Integration : refers to organizing and managing the skills in the right way, with the right mandate, and under the conditions that will help them succeed.
• Funding: refers to determining how to fund the innovation initiatives. Core and adjacent innovations can be funded by the relevant business unit’s P&L through annual budget cycles. Transformational innovations, on the other hand, require a sustained investment that comes from an entity (i.e. executive suite and the CEO).  
• Pipeline management : mechanisms to track and monitor ongoing initiatives and ensure that they are progressing according to plan.
• Metrics : what measurements should inform management. While traditional financial metrics are appropriate for measuring core and adjacent initiatives, a combination of noneconomic and internal metrics should be used to evaluate transformational efforts.

Developing an Innovation Strategy 

The innovation strategy of a competitor or an industry leader may not work for you. While you can learn from their best practices, an explicit innovation strategy to match your own competitive needs will be effective in the long run. 

Follow the innovation strategy steps explained above to formulate a robust strategy and better coordinate your innovation process. 

Got anything to add to our guide? Let us know in the comments below.

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Innovation Blog

Business innovation strategy: 9 key pillars for success in 2021.

• Published on: January 6, 2021
• Author: masschallenge

More than 80% of leaders at large corporations believe innovation is crucial for business growth. And yet, many companies have no innovation strategy.

Technology and digital disruption continue to advance at breakneck speed, leading all industries into a future where business agility counts just as much as having an experienced C-suite.

It doesn’t matter what industry you operate in now—the choice is the same for all companies:

Innovate or get left behind.

Without a solid plan that maps out how you will achieve your goals and establish a sustainable business built to adapt to a rapidly-changing digital landscape, you’re bound to struggle.

In this article, we’ll find out what an innovation strategy is, why it matters, and then we’ll give you the ideas and inspiration to start innovating at your company.

What is an Innovation Strategy?

An innovation strategy is a clearly-defined plan of structured steps a person or team must perform to achieve the growth and future sustainability goals of an organization.

Innovation  aims to create original value, such as new solutions to adapt in changing industries or solve impeding social, health, or economic challenges. A strategy is a plan that details precisely how you will bring your vision into reality.

Essentially, a strategy acts as a heuristic that we can rely on when facing tough decisions. Ergo, an innovation strategy provides people with a framework for critical decision-making relative to company innovation, such as:

• In what areas will we invest?
• How much will we invest?
• Who will make investment decisions?
• What capabilities will we need to develop to support our investments?
• What capabilities can we not build, which we must then acquire or form a partnership to provide?

All of these questions are long-term decisions. When devising an innovation strategy , we must consider our goals and the potential for change over several years.

Why Are Innovation Strategies Important?

Typically, the most effective business models, markets, and products follow a similar growth cycle, often visualized as an S-curve , where diminishing returns set in sometime after the initial growth trajectory.

This slowdown in growth is inevitable, and yet, many companies are taken off-guard. We can’t simply ignore these decisions. If you decide to wait until there is a lull in growth or sales until you gather more information, it may be too late.

In 2008, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes said, “Neither RedBox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.”

This bold claim came even though Blockbuster had lost 75% of its market value between 2003 and 2005.

By 2010, the DVD rental store declared bankruptcy, succumbing to the indomitable rise of Netflix and the streaming television era.

Kodak fell to a similar demise. As smartphones became ubiquitous, Kodak could no longer compete, and in 2012, the company once synonymous with photography filed for bankruptcy and vanished from the camera industry.

These are, of course, highly visible and consumerist examples, but the same dilemmas befall more naunced areas is every industry, whether it be in healthtech, security, sustainability, or infrastructure.

Nothing grows forever, and you can never really know when the inflection point will hit, which is why it is best to always be ready. In other words, you should make innovation a continuous process. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before revenue starts tumbling.

Benefits of an Innovation Strategy

Holding on to traditional practices just because “that’s what we’ve always done” is not a strategy for success. That rigid approach is guaranteed to fail in the face of disruption, as proven by Kodak and Blockbuster.

With that in mind, here are four benefits of an innovation strategy:

Improve existing products

When selling any product or service, you must consider the three levers of the value proposition:

• Benefits and features
• Target customers

A good innovation strategy will experiment with these levers, helping sales and marketing teams to reinvent or revert the value proposition of existing products. In doing so, innovation helps to bring more value to the customer, and ultimately, more revenue for the business.

Develop new products

For many, the most appealing benefit of a business innovation strategy is its capacity to generate entirely new ideas. Innovation can birth new products and services to add to your existing lines, or it may open the doors to target new markets, or solve growing societal problems.

By analyzing the customer journey of different consumer types, you can develop a better understanding of purchasing behaviors. This research helps companies identify the key factors that motivate people to make purchases and discover new opportunities by finding markets or products that need improvement.

Optimize revenues

The three variables of profit are price, demand, and costs. For any business strategy to be deemed successful, it must increase profit by reducing costs or raising prices or demand.

Earnings innovation encourages businesses to seek out ways of maximizing their profit. Quite often, the most effective way to do this is by expanding your customer base.

Whether you’re creating a new product or improving your existing ones, the impact on your earnings should be a top priority of your business innovation strategy.

Optimize costs

Increasing revenue is not the only way to drive profits, as you can also use innovation to reduce costs. When you apply new practices and process throughout the organization, you can optimize internal operations in many ways, such as:

• Switching from legacy offline systems to cloud storage
• Moving to paperless systems for all records and communication
• Using live chatbots instead of human customer support staff

Through constant innovation, it’s possible to streamline workflows and teams so that you spend less on administration and more on activities that generate a higher return on investment (ROI).

9 Key Pillars of a Business Innovation Strategy

Creating an innovation strategy is a vital step that gives your team the understanding and directional insight into how individual, departmental, and organizational goals come together to deliver the business objectives.

Here are 9 pillars of an innovation strategy that enable a company to maximize its potential:

You can execute an innovation strategy using one of two models—business model innovation or leveraging existing business model.

• Business model innovation is the process an organization uses to adapt its business model to deliver more value to its customers. By making changes to its value proposition and the underlying business model, a company can gain a competitive advantage.
• Leveraging Existing Business Model focuses on continuous improvement of core business, rather than seeking to build new business models.

Once you have decided on your preferred model, you can experiment with the concepts below:

2. Intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurship is the practice of enabling employees to act as entrepreneurs while they work within a company.

By empowering individuals to think, act, and create their own ideas, a company benefits from a widespread internal culture of ongoing innovation. An organization can provide resources and support to intrapreneurs, helping them launch startups within the organization.

3. Corporate accelerator

A corporate accelerator is an innovation event or program funded by a large enterprise, which typically offers aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to acquire seed capital, mentorship, and important connections.

These programs usually culminate with a demonstration day, where startups pitch their ideas to the host corporation for the chance to secure investment or a partnership.

By including a corporate accelerator in your innovation strategy, you get the chance to build your network with promising new talent in your industry. Moreover, there is an excellent chance you will discover startups and concepts that align with your own business needs and goals.

4. Innovation labs

An innovation lab is a business department that provides a base and supporting resources for startups or R&D teams to work on new ideas that could disrupt the current market.

While these labs may operate independently from the parent company, it’s also possible to house an innovation lab within the main company building and staff it with existing employees.

5. Open innovation program

The traditional model of research and development relies on internal resources and expertise. Existing employees work together to generate, manage, and sustain new business ideas and retain all information within the company, usually within the R&D department.

Open innovation takes a novel approach by opening the company’s doors to external input, welcoming experts, researchers, and bright minds from outside the company to come and share their ideas.

6. External accelerators

An external accelerator is a little different from an in-house corporate accelerator, as your company will not cover the full costs of running the program. As such, this is a low-risk tactic in an innovation strategy, with the potential to deliver fantastic rewards. Like a corporare accelerator, purview to new startups and concepts that align with business needs and goals are exhibithed, but additionally there’s the benefit of opening your eyes to advantageous approaches that were not intially apart of your goals.

By becoming involved, you can actively participate in advancing startups and focusing on particular solutions that appeal to your business, making this type of accelerator a worthwhile venture.

7. Collaboration

The ideas are just the beginning, but it’s only through interaction and discussion with subject matter experts, researchers, and other innovators that you can successfully bring ideas to life.

Having more conversations around an idea with various outside sources makes it easier to identify potential issues and iterate a basic idea until it is something genuinely worth producing.

You should seek praise and criticism at this stage, as it’s important to challenge the concept and debate the pros and cons in-depth.

8. Ideation

Approximately 4 of every 5 employees has an idea to improve the company. Finding ideas is not a challenge—gathering, analyzing, and implementing the best ideas is the struggle for many companies.

Many companies fail because they lack an effective system to take a simple idea and turn it into a practical process that will deliver results. In other words, they don’t have an innovation strategy.

It’s important to explain your ideation processes to all employees to be aware of how the company captures ideas. When you have this system in place and encourage people to contribute, it’s easier to collect and organize new ideas.

9. Measurement

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. And so, one of the most important pillars of your innovation strategy is a plan for how you will measure success.

Think about your goals and the most relevant metrics to track. For example, if your goal is brand awareness, you could track social shares, website traffic, and email subscribers.

With every new idea, monitor its progress, and gauge performance by taking periodic measurements of your key metrics. It’s not always easy to measure innovation, but doing so from the start allows you to determine whether your efforts are successful.

Innovation Strategy Examples

We can see innovation strategy examples in every industry, as companies strive to get an edge in increasingly competitive marketplaces.

As the rise of café culture birthed hipster pop-ups and independent shops, the dominant chains began to lose ground. Keen to avoid a Kodak moment, Howard Schultz jumped to action . The Starbucks CEO invited store managers from all over the world to come together for a conference to redesign the café experience.

As a leader in technology and sustainability, Bühler invests up to 5% of its turnover every year in research and development. To optimize these efforts, in 2016 Bühler identified five core topics that are decisive for driving change:

• Food and Feed Safety: spend 50% of food relevant R&D projects with focus to improve food and feed safety
• Energy, Waste and Water Reduction: reduction by 50% in the value chains of their customers by 2030
• Mobility: make lighter cars with die-casting solutions and create more efficient batteries for electric vehicles
• Nutrition: spend 20% of food relevant R&D projects with focus to improve nutrition
• Digitalization: improve transparency through digitalization and collaboration

By working with an external accelerator, in the case MassChallenge, Bühler received early access to emerging, high-impact technologies and startups across their five core initiatives.

In 2018, Bühler teamed up with Givaudan to support Legria , a new natural sweetener made from waste streams, supporting their waste reduction initiative. The new business model was made more public-appealing by having two companies in support of it, however maintaining economic independence of each other.

The dating app, Tinder , was the first of its kind to gamify dating. The development team approached potential users at college sororities, recruiting signups from a largely female audience before pitching the app to men in the same colleges’ fraternities.

With a personal touch, the company’s clever innovation strategy quickly grew the app’s user base, as many college students joined because they knew other people on the app.

Sometimes, people can be concerned about offending with their reviews online, and therefore, they may not be totally honest.

Airbnb set 14-day deadlines and implemented a double-blind review process, so neither party can view the other’s review until both have been completed. This change paved the way for more spontaneous reviews and more candid, detailed feedback.

Airbnb turned reviews into a bonafide trust factor on their site with this simple move, which people use to make booking decisions. In the long-term, the strategy has helped grow the authority of the website and company.

The growth of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry tempted many customers away from traditional hardware technology companies. In the cloud age, IBM knew change was needed and decided to take a startup-like approach to innovation.

In 2014, IBM launched a growth hacking team to explore new ideas and tap into new markets through data-driven creativity. Now, the legacy tech corporation operates with a collection of lean, startup-sized teams within its workforce, encouraging team members to work in an innovation lab style to test new marketing strategies.

Our vision for a better company, product, or value for the customer may feel clear, but how we get there isn’t always so simple. Faced with market trends, changes in consumer preferences, new technology, and disruptive competitors, companies will need a blueprint to stay on track.

An innovation strategy goes beyond simple tactics like campaign ideas and marketing ploys to develop the company’s mission, vision, and unique value proposition against this ever-evolving landscape.

Nowadays, it’s no longer an option.

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”  – Sun Tzu

MassChallenge gives partners the tools to meet this moment head on while realizing results that make the difference for their businesses. See how companies like MassMutual , Barry Callebaut , Columbia Threadneedle , and Elta Systems  have partnered with MassChallenge to drive their innovation.

Join the MassChallenge program today to give your corporation the edge in the startup era.

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Innovation in Business: What It Is & Why It’s Important

• 08 Mar 2022

Today’s competitive landscape heavily relies on innovation. Business leaders must constantly look for new ways to innovate because you can't solve many problems with old solutions.

Innovation is critical across all industries; however, it's important to avoid using it as a buzzword and instead take time to thoroughly understand the innovation process.

Here's an overview of innovation in business, why it's important, and how you can encourage it in the workplace.

What Is Innovation?

Innovation and creativity are often used synonymously. While similar, they're not the same. Using creativity in business is important because it fosters unique ideas . This novelty is a key component of innovation.

For an idea to be innovative, it must also be useful. Creative ideas don't always lead to innovations because they don't necessarily produce viable solutions to problems.

Simply put: Innovation is a product, service, business model, or strategy that's both novel and useful. Innovations don't have to be major breakthroughs in technology or new business models; they can be as simple as upgrades to a company's customer service or features added to an existing product.

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Types of Innovation

Innovation in business can be grouped into two categories : sustaining and disruptive.

• Sustaining innovation: Sustaining innovation enhances an organization's processes and technologies to improve its product line for an existing customer base. It's typically pursued by incumbent businesses that want to stay atop their market.
• Disruptive innovation: Disruptive innovation occurs when smaller companies challenge larger businesses. It can be classified into groups depending on the markets those businesses compete in. Low-end disruption refers to companies entering and claiming a segment at the bottom of an existing market, while new-market disruption denotes companies creating an additional market segment to serve a customer base the existing market doesn't reach.

The most successful companies incorporate both types of innovation into their business strategies. While maintaining an existing position in the market is important, pursuing growth is essential to being competitive. It also helps protect a business against other companies affecting its standing.

Learn about the differences between sustaining and disruptive innovation in the video below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

The Importance of Innovation

Unforeseen challenges are inevitable in business. Innovation can help you stay ahead of the curve and grow your company in the process. Here are three reasons innovation is crucial for your business:

• It allows adaptability: The recent COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business on a monumental scale. Routine operations were rendered obsolete over the course of a few months. Many businesses still sustain negative results from this world shift because they’ve stuck to the status quo. Innovation is often necessary for companies to adapt and overcome the challenges of change.
• It fosters growth: Stagnation can be extremely detrimental to your business. Achieving organizational and economic growth through innovation is key to staying afloat in today’s highly competitive world.
• It separates businesses from their competition: Most industries are populated with multiple competitors offering similar products or services. Innovation can distinguish your business from others.

Innovation & Design Thinking

Several tools encourage innovation in the workplace. For example, when a problem’s cause is difficult to pinpoint, you can turn to approaches like creative problem-solving . One of the best approaches to innovation is adopting a design thinking mentality.

Design thinking is a solutions-based, human-centric mindset. It's a practical way to strategize and design using insights from observations and research.

Four Phases of Innovation

Innovation's requirements for novelty and usefulness call for navigating between concrete and abstract thinking. Introducing structure to innovation can guide this process.

In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar teaches design thinking principles using a four-phase innovation framework : clarify, ideate, develop, and implement.

• Clarify: The first stage of the process is clarifying a problem. This involves conducting research to empathize with your target audience. The goal is to identify their key pain points and frame the problem in a way that allows you to solve it.
• Ideate: The ideation stage involves generating ideas to solve the problem identified during research. Ideation challenges assumptions and overcomes biases to produce innovative ideas.
• Develop: The development stage involves exploring solutions generated during ideation. It emphasizes rapid prototyping to answer questions about a solution's practicality and effectiveness.
• Implement: The final stage of the process is implementation. This stage involves communicating your developed idea to stakeholders to encourage its adoption.

Human-Centered Design

Innovation requires considering user needs. Design thinking promotes empathy by fostering human-centered design , which addresses explicit pain points and latent needs identified during innovation’s clarification stage.

There are three characteristics of human-centered design:

• Desirability: For a product or service to succeed, people must want it. Prosperous innovations are attractive to consumers and meet their needs.
• Feasibility: Innovative ideas won't go anywhere unless you have the resources to pursue them. You must consider whether ideas are possible given technological, economic, or regulatory barriers.
• Viability: Even if a design is desirable and feasible, it also needs to be sustainable. You must consistently produce or deliver designs over extended periods for them to be viable.

Consider these characteristics when problem-solving, as each is necessary for successful innovation.

The Operational and Innovative Worlds

Creativity and idea generation are vital to innovation, but you may encounter situations in which pursuing an idea isn't feasible. Such scenarios represent a conflict between the innovative and operational worlds.

The Operational World

The operational world reflects an organization's routine processes and procedures. Metrics and results are prioritized, and creativity isn't encouraged to the extent required for innovation. Endeavors that disrupt routine—such as risk-taking—are typically discouraged.

The Innovative World

The innovative world encourages creativity and experimentation. This side of business allows for open-endedly exploring ideas but tends to neglect the functional side.

Both worlds are necessary for innovation, as creativity must be grounded in reality. You should strive to balance them to produce human-centered solutions. Design thinking strikes this balance by guiding you between the concrete and abstract.

Learning the Ropes of Innovation

Innovation is easier said than done. It often requires you to collaborate with others, overcome resistance from stakeholders, and invest valuable time and resources into generating solutions. It can also be highly discouraging because many ideas generated during ideation may not go anywhere. But the end result can make the difference between your organization's success or failure.

The good news is that innovation can be learned. If you're interested in more effectively innovating, consider taking an online innovation course. Receiving practical guidance can increase your skills and teach you how to approach problem-solving with a human-centered mentality.

Eager to learn more about innovation? Explore Design Thinking and Innovation ,one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you're not sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

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How To Write A Business Plan (2024 Guide)

Updated: Apr 17, 2024, 11:59am

Table of Contents

Brainstorm an executive summary, create a company description, brainstorm your business goals, describe your services or products, conduct market research, create financial plans, bottom line, frequently asked questions.

Every business starts with a vision, which is distilled and communicated through a business plan. In addition to your high-level hopes and dreams, a strong business plan outlines short-term and long-term goals, budget and whatever else you might need to get started. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to write a business plan that you can stick to and help guide your operations as you get started.

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Drafting the Summary

An executive summary is an extremely important first step in your business. You have to be able to put the basic facts of your business in an elevator pitch-style sentence to grab investors’ attention and keep their interest. This should communicate your business’s name, what the products or services you’re selling are and what marketplace you’re entering.

Ask for Help

When drafting the executive summary, you should have a few different options. Enlist a few thought partners to review your executive summary possibilities to determine which one is best.

After you have the executive summary in place, you can work on the company description, which contains more specific information. In the description, you’ll need to include your business’s registered name , your business address and any key employees involved in the business. 

The business description should also include the structure of your business, such as sole proprietorship , limited liability company (LLC) , partnership or corporation. This is the time to specify how much of an ownership stake everyone has in the company. Finally, include a section that outlines the history of the company and how it has evolved over time.

Wherever you are on the business journey, you return to your goals and assess where you are in meeting your in-progress targets and setting new goals to work toward.

Numbers-based Goals

Goals can cover a variety of sections of your business. Financial and profit goals are a given for when you’re establishing your business, but there are other goals to take into account as well with regard to brand awareness and growth. For example, you might want to hit a certain number of followers across social channels or raise your engagement rates.

Another goal could be to attract new investors or find grants if you’re a nonprofit business. If you’re looking to grow, you’ll want to set revenue targets to make that happen as well.

Intangible Goals

Goals unrelated to traceable numbers are important as well. These can include seeing your business’s advertisement reach the general public or receiving a terrific client review. These goals are important for the direction you take your business and the direction you want it to go in the future.

The business plan should have a section that explains the services or products that you’re offering. This is the part where you can also describe how they fit in the current market or are providing something necessary or entirely new. If you have any patents or trademarks, this is where you can include those too.

If you have any visual aids, they should be included here as well. This would also be a good place to include pricing strategy and explain your materials.

This is the part of the business plan where you can explain your expertise and different approach in greater depth. Show how what you’re offering is vital to the market and fills an important gap.

You can also situate your business in your industry and compare it to other ones and how you have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Other than financial goals, you want to have a budget and set your planned weekly, monthly and annual spending. There are several different costs to consider, such as operational costs.

Business Operations Costs

Rent for your business is the first big cost to factor into your budget. If your business is remote, the cost that replaces rent will be the software that maintains your virtual operations.

Marketing and sales costs should be next on your list. Devoting money to making sure people know about your business is as important as making sure it functions.

Other Costs

Although you can’t anticipate disasters, there are likely to be unanticipated costs that come up at some point in your business’s existence. It’s important to factor these possible costs into your financial plans so you’re not caught totally unaware.

Business plans are important for businesses of all sizes so that you can define where your business is and where you want it to go. Growing your business requires a vision, and giving yourself a roadmap in the form of a business plan will set you up for success.

How do I write a simple business plan?

When you’re working on a business plan, make sure you have as much information as possible so that you can simplify it to the most relevant information. A simple business plan still needs all of the parts included in this article, but you can be very clear and direct.

What are some common mistakes in a business plan?

The most common mistakes in a business plan are common writing issues like grammar errors or misspellings. It’s important to be clear in your sentence structure and proofread your business plan before sending it to any investors or partners.

What basic items should be included in a business plan?

When writing out a business plan, you want to make sure that you cover everything related to your concept for the business,  an analysis of the industry―including potential customers and an overview of the market for your goods or services―how you plan to execute your vision for the business, how you plan to grow the business if it becomes successful and all financial data around the business, including current cash on hand, potential investors and budget plans for the next few years.

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Innovation Strategy: Developing Innovative Strategies in Business

Published: 27 February, 2024

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Table of Contents

Innovation has become an imperative for organizations worldwide, yet the multitude of methods and frameworks available often lead to confusion rather than clarity. While various approaches focus on specific aspects such as user experience or design thinking , they often fail to provide a cohesive strategy for innovation from start to finish. An innovation strategy is key to capturing and  sustaining innovation , it serves as a detailed roadmap, comprising a series of strategic steps that propel an organization toward its future objectives. Beyond being a mere guide for business success, this roadmap is essential for ensuring a company remains competitive in its industry by continually devising new and innovative approaches to address challenges.

At Digital Leadership, our core belief is that by harnessing emerging technologies and innovative business models , we can revolutionize customer experiences. Crafting an innovation strategy is crucial for a company’s success. It entails fostering collaboration within the organization to stimulate new ideas and establishing a well-thought-out framework for future growth. It’s crucial to understand that no two innovation strategy plans are identical. 

What is Innovation Strategy?

An innovation strategy is a planned and organized way of using new technologies and creative ideas to bring about significant changes in a company. It involves creating a detailed plan that closely matches the company’s main goals, encouraging a culture of constant improvement. Think of an innovation strategy as a commitment to a shared goal of innovation, including a structured set of activities designed to drive the future growth of the organization. 

Each innovation strategy is unique. This innovation strategy plan is more than just a guide for business success; it functions as a compass, steering the organization through new and creative approaches to address challenges. Developing a company innovation strategy includes clearly defining an innovation mission, aligning activities with long-term business goals , and promoting a culture that welcomes change and creativity. Following such a strategy ensures that organizations stay ahead in their industries, always adjusting and evolving to meet emerging needs.

Business Innovation Strategy: What is Innovation Strategy In Business

In the business environment, remaining competitive necessitates ongoing evolution to address evolving customer demands. Establishing an innovation strategy becomes imperative for organizations aiming to excel in this dynamic setting. One prevalent initial step in crafting such a strategy involves gaining a comprehensive grasp of the organization’s innovation initiatives and overarching business goals . This encompasses identifying the market landscape, comprehending customer requirements, and discerning the most effective strategies to optimize customer satisfaction while utilizing resources efficiently.

Once you have a grasp of your organization’s innovation landscape, the next step is to define a common innovation mission. This mission should align with your overall business strategy and focus your innovation efforts on creating value for your customers. An effective innovation strategy must also include setting specific innovation goals and metrics to measure success. By establishing clear objectives, businesses can better track their progress and adapt their innovation programs as needed.

So, Why are Innovation Strategies Important in Business

• Generating and capitalizing on returns from innovations serves as a primary source of competitive advantage.
• Complex and resource-intensive activities like R&D, product design, and collaboration can impact a firm’s competitive standing. Without strategic guidance, these efforts may yield fragmented and short-term outcomes.
• With globalization, firms face a multitude of opportunities and threats across various markets. A strategic approach to innovation helps navigate this landscape effectively.
• Organizational structures and innovation processes must align with the overall corporate strategy. For instance, R&D efforts may differ depending on whether the firm aims to lead or follow in innovation.
• Articulating long-term strategic objectives for innovation is crucial for engaging with public-sector policies, fostering collaborations, and attracting patient investors.
• A firm that prioritizes innovation strategically is more likely to attract talented individuals seeking opportunities for creative engagement.

The “UNITE Innovation Approach” Model acts as a guide for entrepreneurs to build a strong innovation strategy framework. This model smoothly combines market insights, aligns with business goals, and offers a structured way of generating and implementing ideas. By employing the UNITE model, entrepreneurs gain a strategic advantage, ensuring that their innovation efforts are intentional steps toward lasting success, not haphazard. 

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The UNITE Innovation Approach | Overview

Steps of developing innovation strategy framework.

Innovation is crucial not only for large corporations but also for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It serves as a vital competitive advantage and is often considered a core capability of firms. For SMEs, innovation is particularly important due to resource constraints, making it an effective means to enhance productivity and performance. However, research findings on Heineken Beverage Industry reveal that the organization’s innovative strategies, particularly in process, market, and product innovation, are weak and fail to significantly contribute to its performance and productivity levels. To strengthen their innovation efforts, SMEs can follow several steps in developing an effective innovation strategy.

Step 1: Innovation Strategy Setup

In the crucial first step of Setup within the innovation strategy , organizations lay the groundwork for success. This involves defining the business intentions and direction, outlining high-level Search Fields, and identifying detailed Opportunity Spaces. By articulating the Business Intention, organizations clarify the problem they aim to solve or the legacy they aspire to leave behind, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.

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The UNITE Business Intentions

Utilizing tools like the Search Field Matrix aids in analyzing dimensions like trends and market segments, guiding prioritization of areas for innovation within the overarching innovation strategy. Opportunity Spaces then pinpoint specific intervention sites, outlining Jobs to be Done and target customers in alignment with the innovation strategy’s objectives. Building the core team, led by an experienced entrepreneur, is essential for executing the innovation initiative effectively. Operating in a protected environment, clear goals are set for each stage, with regular updates provided to stakeholders, ensuring smooth organizational setup and progression through subsequent stages.

You can now access the complete UNITE DEFINITION OF SEARCH FIELDS & OPPORTUNITY MATRIX, including a full presentation, related models and instructions for use.

THE UNITE Definition Of Search Fields & Opportunity Spaces

Step 2: problem/solution fit.

In step 2 of developing an innovation strategy, the focus is on achieving Problem/Solution Fit , and aligning customer needs with viable solutions. This involves three key streams of work: Stream A delves into understanding Jobs to be Done, Stream B crafts a Value Proposition, and Stream C defines the Business Model. Bringing the team up to speed is essential, involving active briefings with stakeholders and thorough research to refine objectives. Properly framing the broader objective, clarifying the JTBD, and conducting initial market research are vital steps before proceeding further, ensuring a solid foundation for subsequent actions.

You can now access the complete UNITE PROBLEM / SOLUTION FIT, including a full presentation, related models and instructions for use.

The UNITE Business Model Innovation Patterns

The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework is a powerful tool for understanding customer needs and driving innovation. By focusing on tasks rather than demographics, businesses gain deep insights into their target market. Through qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys , companies validate insights and identify growth opportunities. This approach helps in creating solutions that precisely match customer needs, reducing the risk of failure and increasing market success. Continuous iteration based on customer feedback ensures a competitive edge in today’s customer-centric landscape. Embracing JTBD is essential for fostering innovation and delivering value to customers.

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The UNITE Jobs-To-Be-Done Statement & Map

It offers a systematic approach to understanding customer needs and shaping innovative solutions. By focusing on the tasks or objectives customers are trying to accomplish, rather than just their demographic or psychographic profiles, businesses can uncover deep insights into unmet customer needs and opportunities for improvement.

To effectively outline the tasks and activities customers undertake to fulfill their job using the UNITE Jobs-to-be-Done Universal Job Map, convene your team and set up a whiteboard or wall with eight columns representing the eight steps in the Job Map. From defining and planning to concluding, each step provides insight into the customer’s journey. For example, when purchasing a bottle of wine, steps may include defining preferences, locating a store, preparing by comparing options, confirming the choice, executing the purchase, monitoring the taste, modifying preferences based on satisfaction, and concluding the purchase experience. Understanding these steps is vital for developing solutions that precisely meet the customer’s needs.

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At this stage, having gone through the Jobs-to-be-Done process and developed initial Customer Promises, we find ourselves within a relatively narrow solution space ripe for exploration using methodologies like Design Thinking. The next step involves translating these initial promises into robust solutions by treating each promise as a mini-opportunity Space. Ideation is the key here. We encourage exploring a plethora of ideas, ranging from ambitious “moonshots” to targeted solutions addressing specific but unsolved problems. It’s about being smart in approach, knowing when to think big and when to focus narrowly, all while keeping the original customer needs at the forefront.

To navigate this process effectively, we recommend leveraging frameworks such as the Value Proposition Canvas . This tool provides a structured approach to deep dive into the value proposition, ensuring alignment with customer needs and market demands. Crafting a robust value proposition isn’t just about generating ideas; it’s about understanding the core essence of what your offering brings to the table. By embracing ideation, divergence, and strategic frameworks, businesses can unlock innovation potential and create value propositions that resonate deeply with their target audience.

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The UNITE Business Model Canvas

(3) solution/market fit (mvp).

In step 2, we’ve pinpointed our customers’ needs, tested potential solutions, and outlined a solid business model. However, jumping straight into execution is risky. While we may have a good grasp of what our customers want, our concept hasn’t been fully validated yet. Step 3 of developing an innovation strategy, where customers actually buy and use our product, is crucial for true validation. Rushing into scaling before perfecting our concept can lead to wasted resources and the need for costly adjustments later on. It’s essential to ensure our business concept is finely tuned before expanding.

Innovation strategy hinges on the meticulous execution of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) , a streamlined version of your offering that validates key business assumptions while conserving resources. The MVP approach, epitomized by Zappos’ early success, emphasizes real-world validation over elaborate prototypes, focusing on tangible customer experiences. Yet, challenges like imitation and reputational risk loom large, necessitating strategic differentiation and brand management. Moreover, maintaining quality is paramount, ensuring that the MVP not only functions but delights users, fostering genuine feedback. Executing an MVP entails two phases: development and launch, followed by rigorous testing and iteration. This iterative process drives continuous improvement , steering your innovation strategy towards tangible value creation .

You can now access the complete Unite Solution/Market Fit (MVP) Scorecard, including a full presentation, related models and instructions for use.

The UNITE Problem-Solution Fit & Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Scorecards

In the initial phase of MVP development and launch, four key work streams drive the process: Marketing focuses on brand development and campaign planning, while the Business stream refines models and tests pricing strategies. Product & UX teams develop and test the MVP, while Technology sets up technical infrastructure. Phase B shifts focus to live testing and tweaking, with Marketing launching test campaigns and Business refining operating models.

Step 4: Build & Scale Your Innovation Strategy

After countless tests and a number of pivots and iterations, you have quantitatively proven with real customers that you have achieved a Solution/Market Fit. In other words, your product works and customers have actually bought it! In Stage 4 of developing an innovation strategy, you will be shifting gears and moving from incubation (concerned with finding a working Business Model) to acceleration (building and scaling the identified Business Model). With your business concept now proven and well-defined, the next challenge is getting it to scale. That is the core purpose of this stage: to build and scale the business concept that you have been working on thus far and now get it out into the market to scale as quickly as possible. But moving from your business concept (the strategy) to an actual business (the execution) is inherently difficult. Many organizations fail to bridge the Strategy-Execution Gap , meaning they fail to implement the strategy, or business concept, they originally designed. According to the available statistics, up to 70% of organizations struggle with moving from strategy to execution.

One key ingredient we propose to overcome the Strategy-Execution challenge is to establish how you are going to execute using a well-defined and communicated Operating Model. The Operating Model Canvas emerges as a potent solution, offering a blueprint for execution. Establishing a well-defined and communicated Operating Model is pivotal in overcoming the Strategy-Execution challenge.

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The Growth-Hacking Process

To ensure the effectiveness of the innovation strategy , it is imperative to embed innovation within the organization’s processes and overall strategic framework. This necessitates the allocation of resources, including time, finances, and skilled personnel, to innovation initiatives, while fostering a culture that champions and rewards innovative thinking.

By adhering to these guidelines for formulating an innovation strategy , businesses can position themselves for sustained success and growth amidst a rapidly evolving market landscape. Through a steadfast commitment to customer value creation and adaptability to uncertainty, organizations can pave the path to industry leadership through innovation.

Types of Innovation Strategies

Elaboration on innovation strategy typologies has been provided by various scholars (Freeman and Soete 1997; Goodman and Lawless 1994). These typologies encompass proactive strategies, characterized by technological and market leadership with a strong research focus, often associated with firms embracing first-mover advantages and taking significant risks. Active strategies involve defending existing technologies and markets while remaining agile to respond swiftly to emerging opportunities. Reactive strategies, on the other hand, are adopted by firms with a slower response to innovation, often prioritizing cost-cutting measures over technological advancements. Finally, passive strategies entail engaging in innovation only in response to customer demands, typically involving low-risk initiatives.

Examples of passive strategies can be observed among supplier firms in industries like automotive manufacturing, where lower-tier suppliers often rely on fulfilling specifications rather than driving innovation themselves.

1) Proactive Innovation Strategy

Being ahead in innovation defines successful companies that stand out in the ever-changing business world. These forward-looking organizations don’t just react to changes; they actively search for new opportunities and predict future trends. This proactive approach allows them to take control of the market by introducing fresh and distinctive products or services that capture consumer attention.

Within proactive innovation strategies, several paths contribute to an organization’s overall success:

• Product Innovation: At the core of being proactive in innovation is making new and groundbreaking products. Companies that do well put money into research and development, always trying to do things that haven’t been done before to meet new needs and go beyond what customers expect. Whether it’s using the latest technology or coming up with creative designs, creating innovative products is a big reason why these companies lead the market.
• Process Innovation : To ensure internal efficiency and stay ahead of the competition, organizations with a proactive innovation strategy focus on optimizing their internal operations. Process innovation becomes crucial, streamlining workflows, improving productivity, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
• Business Model Innovation : Recognizing that how value is provided and money is made is as crucial as the products themselves, organizations embracing proactive innovation strategies engage in business model innovation. This involves reimagining the fundamental structure of the business, exploring new revenue streams, and adapting to changing market dynamics.
• Open Innovation : Proactive innovators often collaborate with external partners, startups, or research institutions through open innovation practices. By tapping into a broader pool of ideas, expertise, and resources, these organizations enrich their innovation ecosystem and stay at the forefront of industry advancements.
• Sustainability Innovation: Forward-thinking companies, under a proactive innovation strategy, increasingly incorporate sustainability into their product development and business practices. This aligns with societal and environmental expectations, positioning them as responsible and future-ready entities.

Essentially, a proactive innovation strategy goes beyond mere adaptation; it positions organizations as catalysts of change, architects of the future, and leaders in industries where innovation is the key currency.

For instance, proactive innovators like DuPont and Apple exemplify a commitment to technological leadership through continuous innovation. Microsoft, employing an active strategy, strategically leverages existing technologies while adapting swiftly to market shifts. In contrast, firms like Dell may adopt a more reactive approach to technology adoption but remain proactive in their production and distribution models.

2) Active Innovation Strategy

Active innovation represents a dynamic approach for organizations to swiftly respond to market changes and evolving customer preferences. Embracing flexibility and agility, companies adopting this strategy proactively lead rather than merely follow in the ever-changing business landscape. Key aspects of the active innovation framework include:

• Proactivity : Organizations take the lead in meeting the needs of the continually evolving market.
• Incremental Innovation : Constant, small improvements to existing products or processes keep offerings up-to-date and aligned with customer preferences.
• Service Innovation: Beyond product creation, organizations focus on enhancing the overall customer experience by listening to customer feedback and adapting services accordingly.
• Adaptability : Rapid response to new demands, including staying abreast of technological changes.
• Technology Innovation: A pivotal component, organizations prioritize staying updated on technological advancements to provide modern solutions in the digital era.

Active innovation places a premium on a proactive mindset, swift actions, and a deep understanding of the market. This strategy positions organizations not only to navigate changes effectively but also to capitalize on new opportunities, establishing them as leaders in their respective industries.

3) Reactive Innovation Strategy

In the Reactive Innovation Strategy , businesses respond to market changes as needed. While not always the first to introduce groundbreaking products, these companies prioritize adaptability in the competitive environment. Cautious in their responses, organizations employing this strategy carefully evaluate market shifts before making changes. Though the pace of innovation may be slower compared to proactive approaches, this strategy holds advantages, especially in industries where stability and a deep understanding of market dynamics are paramount.

Strengths of Reactive Innovation:

• Adaptive Innovation: Enables precise adjustments in response to changes, maximizing resource utilization.
• Cost Innovation: Focuses on finding cost-effective solutions and operational efficiencies.

For organizations embracing Reactive Innovation , balancing responsiveness with forward-looking anticipation is key. While not always the first movers, strategic and well-timed responses to market shifts make them resilient players in the ever-changing business landscape. This approach proves particularly relevant in industries experiencing gradual changes, where staying attuned to market demands remains the primary focus.

4) Passive Innovation Strategy

In passive innovation , organizations show limited involvement in the innovation process , often missing opportunities and potential advancements. This cautious approach relies on established practices, avoiding proactive exploration. However, this passivity, while providing stability, can be a double-edged sword, risking stagnation in a quickly changing landscape.

• Imitative Innovation: Organizations that embrace passive innovation may tend to copy successful ideas from competitors or industry leaders, finding security in proven models but sacrificing the agility and originality of more proactive strategies.
• Stability vs. Stagnation: While passive innovation gives a sense of stability, organizations must be aware of potential downsides, including the risk of falling behind in industries where rapid advancements are the norm.
• Open Innovation Bursts : To counteract potential stagnation, passive innovation strategies may benefit from occasional bursts of open innovation. Drawing on external ideas and collaborations brings in fresh perspectives and helps maintain relevance in dynamic industries.

Developing an effective innovation strategy requires a comprehensive approach, incorporating key elements and following a systematic framework. By understanding the market, aligning strategies with business goals , and fostering a culture of innovation , organizations can stay ahead in the ever-evolving business landscape. The examples of successful innovation strategies from industry leaders further highlight the importance of innovation in achieving sustained business growth and competitiveness.

This nuanced understanding of innovation strategy underscores the dynamic interplay between technological advancements, market dynamics, and organizational capabilities, shaping firms’ strategic orientations towards innovation.

Innovation strategies vary widely, each tailored to specific organizational contexts and objectives. Also, there are five styles of Innovation Strategies

• Leadership ignites entrepreneurial energy within teams.
• Culture of rapid innovation and creation of new business models.
• Suitable for industries facing rapid changes.
• Management involves sharing the vision, establishing internal markets for ideas, and encouraging intrapreneurship.
• Managers innovate within existing business structures.
• Transformation of business structures over time.
• Ideal for companies seeking significant yet sustainable change.
• Management practices include experimentation, empowering teams, and customer-centricity.
• Exploration of new directions beyond existing strategic assets.
• Pursuit of radical change in response to limited growth opportunities.
• Management involves identifying crucial assets, encouraging cross-pollination of ideas, and seizing opportunities beyond core areas.
• Conducting low-cost experiments to overcome obstacles hindering major innovations.
• Cautious yet progressive approach to innovation.
• Suitable when significant opportunities are sensed, but details remain unclear.
• Management practices include goal-focused research, patience, and continuous exploration.
• Outsourcing creativity and investing in startups.
• Acquisition of promising startups.
• Feasible with available resources to leverage discoveries from smaller players.
• Management involves maintaining internal R&D capacity, scouting for acquisition prospects, and efficient integration processes.

Innovation Strategy of the Four main Types of Innovation

Four primary types of innovation —radical, architectural, disruptive, and incremental—provide a comprehensive innovation strategy framework for organizations to navigate the complexities of innovation and achieve their strategic objectives. Each type offers unique opportunities and challenges, catering to different levels of risk tolerance and resource availability. Understanding these distinct approaches to innovation is essential for organizations seeking to adapt, evolve, and thrive in an ever-changing marketplace. Let’s explore each type of innovation strategy in detail to gain insights into their applications and implications for organizational success.

• Radical Innovation : Radical innovation involves the development of entirely new technologies, products, or services that often disrupt existing markets or create entirely new ones. It represents a significant departure from current offerings and requires a high level of investment and risk.
• Architectural Innovation : Architectural innovation focuses on reconfiguring or redesigning existing systems, processes, or components within an organization to create new value. It involves changing the underlying structure or design of a product or service while keeping its core functionality intact.
• Disruptive Innovation : Disruptive innovation refers to the introduction of a product, service, or business model that fundamentally changes the way an industry operates, typically by targeting underserved or overlooked segments of the market. It often starts at the low end of the market and gradually improves to challenge established competitors.
• Incremental Innovation : Incremental innovation involves making small, gradual improvements to existing products, processes, or services over time. It focuses on optimizing and refining existing offerings rather than introducing radical changes, making it a lower-risk approach to innovation.

Innovation Strategy Examples

(1) apple innovation strategy.

Apple’s innovation strategy revolves around creating groundbreaking products that seamlessly integrate hardware, software, and services. Their focus on user experience and design sets them apart in the technology industry. This dedication matches the core of t he marketing innovation strategy – putting user happiness first by creating new and exciting solutions.

(2) Amazon Innovation Strategy

Amazon’s innovation strategy centres around customer-centric approaches, such as one-click purchasing, Prime membership benefits, and advanced supply chain management. Their focus on enhancing customer experience sets the standard for e-commerce.

(3) Tesla Innovation Strategy

Tesla’s innovation strategy includes advancements in electric vehicles, renewable energy solutions, and autonomous driving technology. Constantly pushing boundaries, Tesla exemplifies the essence of value innovation strategy, delivering cutting-edge solutions that reshape the automotive industry.

(4) Netflix Innovation Strategy

Netflix’s innovation strategy lies in content creation, personalized recommendations, and streaming technology. They continually invest in original content and technological advancements to stay ahead in the entertainment industry.

(5) Microsoft Innovation Strategy

Microsoft’s innovation strategy encompasses a diverse range of products and services, from operating systems to cloud computing. Their commitment to empowering individuals and organizations through technology fuels continuous innovation.

(6) Google Innovation Strategy

Google’s innovation strategy revolves around search algorithms, online advertising, and a wide array of digital services. Their commitment to organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible drives innovation in various sectors.

(7) Nike Innovation Strategy

Nike’s innovation strategy focuses on product design, materials, and technological advancements in sportswear. They continuously introduce new technologies, such as Nike Adapt, to enhance athletic performance and customer experience.

Types of Innovation Strategies Examples

Innovation strategies can vary significantly depending on the industry, organizational goals, and market dynamics. Here are several types of innovation strategies along with examples:

• Example: Apple’s continuous development of the iPhone, introducing new features and designs with each iteration.
• Example: Toyota’s implementation of lean manufacturing principles, led to streamlined production processes and reduced waste.
• Example: Netflix transitioning from a DVD rental service to a subscription-based streaming platform, revolutionizing the entertainment industry.
• Example: Airbnb’s platform, enables individuals to rent out their properties to travellers, disrupting the traditional hospitality industry.
• Example: Procter & Gamble’s Connect + Develop program, which sources innovation ideas from outside the company to fuel new product development.
• Example: Tesla’s electric vehicles disrupt the automotive industry by challenging traditional gasoline-powered vehicles with innovative technology.
• Example: Coca-Cola introduces new flavours or packaging variations of its beverages to maintain consumer interest and market relevance.
• Example: SpaceX’s development of reusable rocket technology, aims to revolutionize space travel and exploration.

Elements of a Great Innovation Strategy

Crafting an innovation strategy plan entails navigating a dynamic landscape, demanding a flexible and multifaceted approach.

• Nurturing an Innovation culture : Establishing an environment that fosters creativity and embraces change is crucial for fostering innovation.
• Embracing Digital Transformation strategy : Incorporating technology to enhance processes and business models is a key aspect of digital transformation.
• Top-Level Endorsement: Securing commitment and support from senior leaders is essential for successful innovation initiatives.
• Strategic Resource Allocation : Wisely allocating resources to support novel and imaginative ideas is paramount.
• Customer-Centric Focus : Prioritizing and comprehending customer needs throughout the innovation process is indispensable.
• Agile Adaptation : Remaining receptive to agile methodologies facilitates swift adjustments to evolving circumstances.
• Performance Measurement: Implementing metrics to assess the success and impact of innovation efforts is vital.
• Investment in Research and Development: Devoting funds to research and development endeavors represents a valuable investment.
• Learning from Risks and Setbacks: Cultivating a culture that embraces risk-taking and views failures as learning opportunities is critical.
• Innovative Business Models : Continuously reimagining and innovating fundamental aspects of the business model adds a layer of dynamism to the innovation strategy.

In essence, innovation is the cornerstone of organizational longevity and competitive advantage. By embracing diverse innovation strategies such as technological advancements, architectural refinements, disruptive shifts, and incremental enhancements, businesses can unlock fresh opportunities and deliver unique value propositions. Whether through revolutionary changes or gradual refinements to existing offerings, innovation is pivotal for adapting to market fluctuations and seizing value.

Central to these pursuits is the evolution or reinvention of the business model. By aligning with customer preferences, organizations can develop innovative solutions that resonate with consumers, thereby bolstering market presence and fostering growth. Ultimately, a well-crafted innovation strategy empowers organizations to stand out from the competition, achieve objectives, and ensure sustained success in today’s fiercely competitive business arena.

Frequently Asked Questions

(1) what role do senior leaders play in achieving innovation strategy.

Senior executives wield significant influence in propelling innovation strategy forward. Their unwavering commitment, backing, and visionary guidance establish the organizational ethos. They allocate resources judiciously and foster an atmosphere conducive to experimentation and bold risk-taking.

(2) How is product innovation strategy delineated in business?

Product innovation strategy in business encompasses the formulation and introduction of novel or refined products to satisfy consumer demands and attain a competitive edge. It revolves around the conception of pioneering features, designs, or functionalities that distinguish the product within the market milieu.

(3) What delineates the trifecta of Innovation Strategies?

The trinity of innovation strategies comprises proactive, active, and reactive approaches. Proactive strategies entail a proactive quest for novel opportunities, active strategies pivot swiftly in response to market dynamics, while reactive strategies are triggered only by exigencies.

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50+ business model examples

Discover innovative business models, see visualizations of their different revenue streams, and copy ideas for your startup.

• Who is this guide for?

How to choose the right business model

Business model inspiration, companies to learn from, who is this guide for.

When in need of a business model for your next startup or corporate venture, there are more than a couple of options to explore. To make your decision-making a little easier, we’ve analyzed 50 innovative revenue models and partnership ideas. 

Browse these business model examples to spot the ideas that are fit for your company’s needs, and let these use cases inspire you to start building your own business plan.

At Board of Innovation, we specialize in innovation and business design. If you feel you need help moving forward, you can dive deeper into how we do business model innovation or get in touch .

In this deck, you will find a comprehensive guide through business models from different companies and industries.

This guide will help you understand how each business model works, the products or services they offer, and what makes it unique. These key insights will help you in the selection process of a business model that works best for you.

Have you ever wondered how some companies are profitable?

In this deck, we deep dive into business models used by companies in multiple industries. Using our Business Model Kit , we offer a visual overview of how each business profits from the model that drives it. .

Free (or nearly free) for the user:

• Early exit strategy
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Third party options:

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• Franchise model

Mixed business model:

• Razor and blade model
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Broker/matchmaking:

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Grab is an on-demand ride service that has since expanded to everyday services like deliveries, financial services and more – making it a superapp. It charges a service fee of 20% ~ 30% for every transaction that goes through its platform.

Hubs charges clients for each industrial manufacturing job they begin through the platform. Prices are determined by a machine learning algorithm.

Patients Like Me offers a free health community service to its users. They make money by selling the data, generated by the community, to pharmaceutical companies.

WHOOP offers a wearable fitness gadget that gives personalized recommendations and feedback. WHOOP charges a monthly subscription fee to access the data on the platform, while the first device is free.

Digit is a financial service application that monitors financial behavior and automates its users’ savings. Digit receives a fixed monthly fee of $5 from its users. On top of that, it can leverage the funds it has under management for greater returns

Kiva is the first online non-profit lending platform for underserved populations.As a non-profit, Kiva doesn’t profit from loans received — lenders donate to Kiva to cover operating costs. The remainder of costs are covered through grants, supporters, and field partners.

Appear Here is the Airbnb of retail spaces — an online marketplace to list, find, and book short-term retail spaces. After the landlord sets a daily, weekly and monthly price, Appear Here takes commission between 12% - 15% on a completed transaction, while the space owners pay no listing fee.

Kaggle makes money in two ways: With Kaggle competition, they receive a “listening fee” for each competition posted on the platform. Also, they provide a service for matching companies to the top 0.5% of their community, which they call Kaggle Connect.

23andMe makes money with personal genetic tests, providing reports on lineage discovery & +240 health conditions. It’s believed that their DNA research studies & surveys will soon be an additional way of making money, with a mainly B2B focus instead of B2C.

Friendsurance works as a broker between Policy Holders and existing Insurance Partners. They’re letting customers share risks with friends, allowing them to lower prices due to reduced fraud & process costs, better risk pools, etc.

AliveCor makes money by selling ECG devices ($199) that fit on existing smartphones and via their AliveInsights Service – a professional analysis service that makes it easy to get expert insight on your ECG readings.

Glow sells “data insights” regarding conceiving to Research Institutions & gives exposure to trustworthy Infertility Treatment Clinics. The data is generated by users who use the Glow free fertility-tracking app.

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What is Innovation Strategy? Stages, Types & Examples

Picture this — you have a new startup or large business operating in a highly competitive market. A constant shift in trends makes it hard to keep up with your competitors and offer products people want. How will your organization keep up with those changes, thrive in the market, and set the pace for the industry with what you offer?

In the business world, the answer usually lies in your innovation strategy . It isn’t only about generating great ideas — it’s also about creating a strategy to put your ideas into place to drive growth and attract customers.

In this guide, we’ll walk through creating an innovation strategy. We’ll go through the process — from idea generation to executing your plan . We’ll also cover the types of innovation you can invest in and a few examples of companies innovating in competitive markets.

What is innovation strategy?

What are the stages of innovation strategy, what are the types of innovation strategy, what are some examples of successful innovation strategies, imd’s driving strategic innovation program — empowering businesses for innovation success.

An innovation strategy is a detailed roadmap with a series of strips that helps your organization reach its future goals. This roadmap isn’t just a guide for business success — it’s a guide that helps you keep up in your industry by thinking of new and innovative ways to tackle problems.

These innovations can be creating new products to solve future problems, optimizing business processes to be more efficient, or thinking of entirely new ways to disrupt your industry.

Ultimately, your innovation strategy will help you align your business with your customer’s needs and create products and services to give your company a competitive advantage.

The innovation process doesn’t happen in a vacuum — it requires a clear process that takes a new idea and brings it to market.

1. Idea generation and ideation

Idea generation is the foundation of an innovation system. It’s the process that helps companies develop ideas to compete in the market and explore new opportunities without taking too much risk.

Many companies innovate by taking advantage of new technologies for insights — learning from data to see what problems customers have that you can solve. Innovators can use this information to explore new ideas and brainstorm ways to bring those ideas to life.

The vital part of this process is customer feedback. A great idea needs a customer base available to see success — and not every idea will have people around willing to pay money to access it. New ideas need customer validation to determine if they are viable.

2. Idea evaluation and selection

Idea evaluation and selection is assessing new ideas to see if they are feasible. During this process, you’ll look at costs, time to market, potential profit, and other business metrics to see if it’s worth pursuing an idea.

If it looks like a product you’re considering has a chance to succeed, then the next step is to compare it with what’s currently on the market. Is your new product something new that doesn’t exist yet, or does it improve on existing products? Will this help your company stand out?Use this information to find the unique value proposition and determine if the idea is worth pursuing.

3. Implementation and execution

The implementation and execution phase is where you take your new idea and turn it into a concrete plan to make it a reality. But this stage is more than building a product — it’s also about creating a successful business strategy and finding help to create your idea.

The first step is product development. Which vendors can supply the materials for your product or help you manufacture it? Which members of your team will be the best fit for development?

Once you find the right people, implementation becomes a matter of executing a plan. It involves project management, resource management, process management, and continuous improvement. 

4. Monitoring and evaluation

You’re breaking new ground when innovating in an industry, so you may not get everything right. Monitoring and evaluation will help you handle those problems and adapt your innovation efforts.

Your goal when monitoring a new project is to assess your performance. Is what you’re doing helping you achieve your goals and keeping you on track for release?

A key part of doing this is metrics. These numbers will tell you how well you are doing. Track your time to release, product progress, defects, and eventual return on investment. Reassess your strategy and make changes if your metrics show you aren’t meeting your goals.

There isn’t one type of innovation in business. Let’s look at four of the main ways you can create new and innovative ideas.

• Product innovation : Product innovation is the process of building new products or upgrading existing ones to meet customer needs in a new way. It helps companies offer better products and stay competitive in evolving markets. This process happens when you pay attention to product markets. You see the problems customers have and their issues with the current offerings. Use that information to develop novel ways to solve those problems and offer a better customer experience.
• Process innovation : Process innovation is changing how you do things inside an organization. You aim to apply new initiatives and technology to optimize efficiency and your ability to compete in the market. Take the inclusion of a new IT system, for instance. New technological innovation can improve your employees’ ability to collaborate and get more done — allowing them to serve customers better in your core business.
• Business model innovation : Business model innovation is about making big changes to how a business runs. It isn’t just a few changes in business processes or a new product. Your goal is to create new business models to capture value in the market. One of the common ways this happens is finding new sources of revenue. An excellent example of this is service businesses adding subscriptions to their revenue. Take an HVAC company. Instead of relying on incoming calls to get business, HVAC companies offer customers a maintenance plan — allowing companies to get a new source of predictable revenue.
• Disruptive innovation : Disruptive innovation is about shaking things up. You aren’t launching products that are a minor upgrade of what exists — you’re making game-changing innovation initiatives that disrupt existing business models. Radical innovation often comes from startups, such as rideshare companies taking on the taxi industry. You’re rewriting some of the rules to take on the established industries to provide a better service and give people more options.

Now that you’ve seen what types of innovations there are, let’s look at a few innovation strategy examples.

Amazon was one of the first companies to use the internet to sell products. It started as an online bookstore, but as time passed, it changed its focus to become a one-stop marketplace for every product you can imagine.

Since then, Amazon has continued to use technology to innovate in the online market. It now offers subscription services to offer more customer value, video streaming, audiobooks, eBooks, and countless other value-added services for its customers.

Apple’s innovation projects are a blend of user-centric design and quality. Apple doesn’t often create brand-new product categories. Instead, it waits to see how technology trends play out and creates innovative approaches to those products.

One of the best examples of this is the iPhone. Apple didn’t create the first smartphone. Blackberry was one of the first to market and was popular for a while.

But smartphones didn’t start making their way into most homes until Apple unveiled the iPhone — their easy-to-use smartphone offering that every consumer can use.

Startups and entrepreneurs

Innovation is at the heart of the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Let’s look at how a few companies changed the game with their new innovations.

• Uber: Took on the taxi industry by allowing regular people to use their cars to offer rideshare services to customers using mobile apps.
• Airbnb: Competed against the established hotel industry to give people more lodging options and allow homeowners to rent parts of their homes.
• Netflix: Used a subscription model and on-demand streaming approach instead of a monthly fee for live TV.
• Stripe: Changed the payment industry by allowing companies to integrate payment processing into their websites easily.

Innovation strategy is an essential part of creating a roadmap for long-term success. It helps you define new product ideas, validate them in the market, and execute the process of bringing them to life. Without the right strategy, you take more risk of building products that don’t work or won’t meet your customers’ needs. IMD offers business school programs for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to learn how to drive innovation in their businesses.

Learn more about what we offer and how our program for driving strategic innovation can help you accomplish more in business and build something great.

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Are you curious how certain new businesses can completely reshape industries and leave established companies struggling to keep up? In the ever-changing business world, staying ahead of the competition requires constant innovation. While there have been many ideas and strategies over time, few have been as impactful and enduring as disruptive innovation. This article will […]

Picture this — you have a new startup or large business operating in a highly competitive market. A constant shift in trends makes it hard to keep up with your competitors and offer products people want. How will your organization keep up with those changes, thrive in the market, and set the pace for the […]

For companies willing to embrace innovation during uncertain times, the rewards can be transformative, both during a crisis and in its aftermath. In this article, we demystify the concept of business innovation, offering actionable steps and tangible examples to help ignite a culture of innovation within your organization. We delve into the many benefits of […]

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Start » strategy, how to write a business plan for inventions.

Attract investors and formalize processes by developing a roadmap for commercializing your innovation.

An inventor’s business plan is a framework for bringing a concept to market and achieving profitability. It’s similar to a regular business plan but adds details about intellectual property protection and prototypes. Ideally, a business plan for inventions builds upon a feasibility study. It should highlight your findings from a comprehensive competitive analysis and be tailored to its intended audience, such as investors.

An invention business plan is crucial for getting funding and securing strategic alliances. But you can also use it internally to guide operations, from marketing to hiring. Here’s how to craft an effective report.

Determine your audience and purpose

Although most business plans for a new invention follow a basic outline, you can tailor your approach to appeal to specific readers. Suppose you want to pitch your idea to investors or accelerator programs. In this case, it’s essential to mention funding requirements. But you should also emphasize the skills and experience your team brings to the table. According to Heer Law , “Often, investors and other stakeholders care as much or more about who the people are behind an invention than the potential of the invention on its own.”

However, if you’re looking for co-founders and employees, modify your document to clarify the skills required and long-term benefits for early joiners. Once you understand what drives your intended audience, you can write a business plan that excites them while answering their questions.

[ Read more: How These Innovation-Driven Startups Reached an Elusive Milestone: Profitability ]

Outline your invention business plan sections

The Small Business Association (SBA) said, “There’s no right or wrong way to write a business plan. What’s important is that your plan meets your needs.” You can use a basic template , take a free course , or start from scratch. Begin your process by outlining commonly used sections, then modify your document to include invention-specific content.

Often, investors and other stakeholders care as much or more about who the people are behind an invention than the potential of the invention on its own.

Christopher Heer, Annette Latoszewska, and Daryna Kutsyna, Heer Law

Consider adding the following components:

• Executive summary: Keep it concise but touch on each aspect of your plan. Remember to pique interest and compel your audience to read more.
• Company overview: Discuss your industry and niche, including what makes your invention and business stand out. Explain how you will commercialize your design (selling to consumers, wholesale, or retail).
• Organizational structure: This is where you describe your legal business structure (sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company (LLC), or corporation). Provide details about inventors, executive team, and current or prospective employees.
• Market and competitive analysis: Share insights from your feasibility study, including an analysis of your industry, competitors, and market. Add statistics about market size and growth. Plus, offer a customer profile and explain what differentiates your invention from others.
• Invention: Tell readers about your design (features and functions) and how it benefits customers. Mention your product research, prototypes, and intellectual property registrations .
• Marketing and sales: Explain how you will apply competitive and market insights to earn a return. Topics may include sales, pricing, promotional strategies, positioning statements, and marketing campaigns.
• Financial information: Show how your invention will be profitable and use spreadsheets, charts, and graphs. Include projected revenue , profit and loss, cash flow, and a balance sheet. Also, detail any funding needs, how you’ll get the money, and what you’ll do with it.
• Appendix: Add all supporting evidence for your invention business plan. For instance, Chron.com said, “Investors respond well to business plans that include endorsements of the product from potential customers.

Add sections for your new invention

In addition to these regular sections, you can expand your business plan to include research and development, intellectual property protection , and owned or future IP assets. According to Heer Law, the research and development component helps readers understand “future products that can be commercially exploited.” Likewise, details about your intellectual property protection ensure investors that you’ve taken action to defend your innovation from unwanted duplication.

Provide information about any assets going through the application process and how various trademarks, patents , and copyrights will impact profitability. Also, discuss if you plan on developing new inventions or have prototypes available.

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• How to create a successful business innovation strategy

The phrase ‘business innovation’ is thrown around a lot. So much so that it’s become a bit of a buzzword.

But there’s a reason it’s such a well-used term.

Businesses need innovation to survive. It’s as simple as that. Without it, you risk falling behind in the marketplace and losing business to competitors. And if you don’t turn things around, you’ll eventually be out of business.

In this article, we’ll take you through the ins and outs of business innovation. We’ll outline some of the key benefits that come with using it and how to create a successful business innovation strategy.

First things first, let’s start from the top: What actually is business innovation?

• What is business innovation?

Business innovation is the creation of new ideas. Whether that’s with a new process, product, or service, the innovation team produces new ideas that will support the growth and development of the business.

There are two types of business innovation:

• External: Creating a new product or service for consumers.
• Internal: Improving internal systems and processes.

Whatever type of innovation a business chooses to do, the end goal will always be to improve the business and increase sales.

An example of business innovation:

Just Mad , a product design and innovation consultancy, noticed that a lot of their clients were struggling to get from an initial idea to launch in one smooth process. There were a lot of reasons for this, which varied from business to business.

Lack of direction, timeframes, and having too many ideas at once are a few of the common challenges.

As you can imagine, these challenges affected the success of both the client’s results and Just Mad’s ability to predict the duration and outcome of the project.

To better serve their clients with distributed teams, Just Mad adopted a new process: design sprints. By innovating this process, they were able to offer more flexibility while still delivering an end result within a specific timeframe.

Put simply — business innovation allowed Just Mad to streamline the entire design process for their clients.

• Why is business innovation important?

Are there any other reasons why business innovation is important besides increasing sales and growing your business?

In short, yes.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of business innovation.

Keep up with changes in the marketplace

No matter what industry you’re from, the marketplace is constantly changing. And if your business doesn’t keep up with these changes, you might find yourself in a sticky situation.

Take a look at the hybrid work model as an example. 47% of employees would leave their job if their company didn’t offer hybrid work when the pandemic came to an end.

Business leaders had to reevaluate how employees would work when normality began creeping back in. By the end of 2021, 76% of employees are working at a company that allows hybrid work.

Without keeping up with changes and focusing on business innovation, a lot of companies would’ve lost some of their workforce. By adapting their internal processes, they were able to keep up with the changes in the marketplace.

Differentiate yourself from competitors

A lot of businesses operate in overcrowded and saturated markets. In most cases, it’s hard to cut through the noise and stand out from the crowd.

This is where business innovation can help.

When implemented correctly, business innovation allows businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors. Take a look at the innovation management process to see for yourself.

Stage one is idea generation, a key part of which is conducting competitor analysis .

You’ll spend some time reviewing what your key competitors are doing, what they’re not doing, and who they’re targeting. By doing so, you’ll have a better understanding of what you can do to differentiate yourself and gain a competitive advantage.

Without this part of the innovation process, you might struggle to find the most effective way to improve your processes or expand your products or services.

The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of time launching something new only for it to fall by the wayside because it doesn’t stand apart from the competition.

Streamline internal processes

When done right, process innovation allows you to streamline your processes, increase productivity, and minimize risk.

Let’s use business process automation as an example.

When you collaborate with the innovation team and discuss new ideas, you notice that there are a lot of repetitive and mundane tasks that take up a lot of time. It becomes clear that your processes could be more efficient with automation.

By automating parts of your business processes, your entire workflow becomes much more streamlined. As a result, team members have more time to focus on other areas of the business.

Improve the customer experience

Whether you’re innovating internally or externally, business innovation should always meet customer demands and improve the customer experience.

Let’s look at Guidewire as an example.

The company used Miro to innovate its internal processes. Here’s what the company did:

• Digitized note-taking and brainstorming to streamline in-person workshops.
• Improved internal cross-functional collaboration to streamline workflows.
• Shared Miro boards virtually with customers for concept walkthroughs.

All of these innovations improved their processes and made their day-to-day work more efficient. But as a result, Guidewire could also provide a better experience to its customers.

So although business innovation benefits the efficiency and productivity of your business, all of this still contributes towards providing a better customer experience.

A business innovation strategy provides structure and alignment to your innovation efforts. It outlines the goals and timeline and ensures that all of your innovation activity aligns with the company strategy.

So how do you create a business innovation strategy?

Every business is different, so each business will need a different strategy.

However, you must follow some key steps to give your strategy the best chance of success — and that’s exactly what we’re going to outline in this section.

But before we get into the thick of it, ask yourself the following questions:

• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to be?
• How will you get there?

Your strategy should aim to answer all these questions, so keep this in mind as we move through the stages of the process.

Conduct an innovation assessment

First, you’ll start by conducting an innovation assessment to determine your company’s current level of innovation. It’s also known as an innovation audit.

The assessment will show you what innovative efforts are already underway, what works well, and help you spot any room for improvement.

If you’re not familiar with an innovation assessment, here’s a breakdown of all the stages:

Let’s look at these in more detail.

PHASE ONE: QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

1. Innovation audit survey

Start by looking internally and conducting an innovation survey. This should be sent to everyone across all departments and should aim to find out how innovation works in the business and what innovative efforts are already underway.

2. Analyze the results

Once you’ve received answers to the survey, spend some time analyzing the results.

Throughout this process, you should be able to see where your innovation capabilities are and how they might be restricted going forward. It’ll also identify gaps between how management perceives the innovation process and how it works in the business.

PHASE TWO: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

3. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups

Face-to-face interviews and focus groups take place so you can get a deeper understanding from management-level staff across different departments. It’s an opportunity for you to dig deeper into their perception of the current innovation efforts and capabilities.

By the end of the interviews, you should have a clear picture of how management sees the development of innovation and an understanding of the innovation process as a whole.

4. Analyze and cluster the results

Similar to phase one, you’ll now need to analyze all the feedback. But this time, you can start to cluster your results. This involves recognizing patterns and grouping these concepts.

Using an online whiteboard can be helpful for this process, as you can easily spot any commonalities. If you record all the interviews separately, it’ll be harder to spot trends.

We’d also suggest grouping the information based on different parts of the business innovation process. For example, you could start to categorize feedback into the following areas:

• Innovation strategy
• Resource allocation
• Innovation types (more on this later)
• Company culture
• Strengths and weaknesses (sometimes known as a SWOT analysis )
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Decision making

By categorizing your research in this way, you won’t miss any vital information. It also makes it easier for you to visualize the trends across these different areas.

PHASE THREE: FINAL ANALYSIS

5. Comparative data analysis

Now that you’ve got your quantitative and qualitative data, it’s time to compare the two. This is where you’ll be able to see the gaps between what management perceives in relation to innovation and what their team members actually see in their day-to-day work.

6. Conclusion

You’ve considered various accounts and identified trends across the board. You can now determine where your business stands with innovation from an unbiased and objective viewpoint.

Choose your innovation type

There are different types of innovation to be aware of. To make the most out of your innovation strategy, you need to understand what these are and how to use them.

The four main types are disruptive, radical, incremental, and adjacent. Let’s look at these in more detail:

Figuring out which type of innovation suits your business depends on several factors. These include some of the following:

• The industry you work in
• Your revenue and profits
• Your target market
• Customer demand
• The marketplace as a whole
• Your competitors
• Your budget for innovation

Ultimately, it’s up to you to identify what works well for your business and which type of innovation you need to succeed. Spend some time familiarizing yourself with the different types of innovation, and you’ll be in a good position to choose the right option for your business.

Identify where you want to be with specific goals and objectives

You’ve got a firm grasp on where you currently stand with your innovation activities and capabilities. Now, it’s time to figure out where you want to be.

To do this effectively, you need to identify your goals and objectives. These will shape your innovation mission statement, which will guide your entire strategy.

Goals are also a great way to measure progress as you start to roll out your innovation, especially if you have milestones to hit along the way.

If you don’t reach the milestones, you know you’re not on track to hit your deadline. You can be proactive and make changes to get yourself back on track.

Usually, the motivation behind the strategy falls into one of the following categories:

• Strategic: Long-term goals that will help the company grow. This might not produce vast financial returns in the short term, but it can help fool-proof your business for the future.
• Financial: Your motivation is solely to increase profits or cut costs.
• Hybrid: A mixture of the above.

Whether your goal is strategic, financial, or a mixture of both, be clear about this sooner rather than later. Knowing what your goal is will make sure that your innovation strategy stays on track and supports the success of your business.

When it comes to creating goals, we’d suggest using the SMART goals framework .

Table of contents

12 min read

• Create your business innovation strategy with Miro

With the SMART goals framework, your goals will be clear, achievable, and effective.

And when creating goals, don’t forget to take the overall business goals into account. Everything must align with the business’s overall strategy to help your business grow and succeed.

How to use miro to boost your innovation strategy

Creating a business strategy of any kind requires the right software. If you’re not using the right software, the planning and execution will be harder than it needs to be.

Using Miro’s online whiteboard, you’ll have access to a variety of features and functions that’ll make it easy to boost your innovation strategy. Let’s look at what they are:

• Collaboration: Being able to collaborate with your team throughout the innovation process is vital. If you don’t, you risk alienating team members and making the innovation process harder to manage. With Miro, teams can video chat and comment capabilities in the software you’re using. These features will make it easier for you to communicate and collaborate with your team.
• Real-time access: Real-time access to your innovation strategy is a huge bonus. Why? Because it means that you (and anyone in your team) can see the most up-to-date information. All you have to do is open the software, and you can see how things are progressing. Not to mention, the information automatically updates whenever changes are made. And if you use an online tool like Miro, it’s easy for remote teams to have real-time access, too.

• Integrations: Being able to integrate with third-party tools helps you streamline the innovation process. Think about it — you can align all your platforms and tools in one location. There’s no need to flick back and forth between different platforms. Everything’s in one online whiteboard .

By now, you should have a handle on the ins and outs of innovation in business. You know what it is, the benefits of using it, and how to create a successful business innovation strategy.

Now, it’s time to put your newfound knowledge to use.

Using Miro, you can start planning and preparing for your next business innovation strategy. Share your whiteboard with colleagues to get feedback, ask for their input, and make the entire process as collaborative as possible.

We’d suggest starting with our project canvas template to create a clear communication framework for your strategy. Sign up for free to get started.

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The eight essentials of innovation

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January 4, 2024

In the time since this article was first published, McKinsey has continued to explore the topics it covers. Read on for a summary of our latest insights.

Innovation may sound like a creative art: hard to quantify, dependent on lightning-bolt inspiration, subject to the availability of magic dust and luck. It’s true that innovation relies, to an extent, on the vagaries of ingenuity. But according to McKinsey research, innovation—and, crucially, the type of outperformance that innovation can spark in organizations—is much more likely to happen when there is a rigorous process  in place to bring ideas to fruition.

The simple fact is that innovation translates to growth : innovation leaders generate almost twice as much revenue growth from innovation as their competitors. Our research in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic has found that these organizations, which we call “innovative growers,” do this by cultivating four best practices :

• Link innovation to growth aspirations and reinforce its importance in strategic and financial discussions.
• Pursue multiple pathways to growth, both in core businesses and when entering adjacent customer segments, industries, or geographies. Innovative growers also only enter markets where there are clear opportunities to create value.
• Invest productively in all innovation capabilities, including research and development, resourcing, and operational agility.
• Cultivate strong M&A capabilities, particularly programmatic dealmaking.

Innovation can be especially rewarding when deployed as a crisis-management measure . During periods of uncertainty, organizations that invest in innovation—contrary, perhaps, to the impulse to batten down the hatches—are also more likely to emerge ahead of competitors. More specifically, innovative organizations are more likely to find emerging pockets of growth  in times of uncertainty.

Looking ahead, we expect innovative organizations to keep outpacing their peers. Our 2023 McKinsey Global Survey  reveals a striking connection  between organizations’ innovation capabilities and their abilities to increase value through the newest digital technologies, including generative AI. Everyone is talking about gen AI, but organizations with strong innovative cultures are walking the walk, too: thirty percent of top innovators we surveyed said they are already deploying gen AI at scale in their innovation and R&D functions, more than six times the rate of companies that are lagging on innovation. Top innovators are also already reaping significantly better business outcomes from their AI investments than slower-moving competitors.

Articles referenced:

• “ Companies with innovative cultures have a big edge with generative AI ,” August 2023
• “ Innovation: Your solution for weathering uncertainty ,” January 2023
• “ Committed innovators: How masters of essentials outperform ,” June 2022
• “ Innovation in a crisis: Why it is more critical than ever ,” June 2020

It’s no secret: innovation is difficult for well-established companies. By and large, they are better executors than innovators, and most succeed less through game-changing creativity than by optimizing their existing businesses.

Yet hard as it is for such organizations to innovate, large ones as diverse as Alcoa, the Discovery Group, and NASA’s Ames Research Center are actually doing so. What can other companies learn from their approaches and attributes? That question formed the core of a multiyear study comprising in-depth interviews, workshops, and surveys of more than 2,500 executives in over 300 companies, including both performance leaders and laggards, in a broad set of industries and countries (Exhibit 1). What we found were a set of eight essential attributes that are present, either in part or in full, at every big company that’s a high performer in product, process, or business-model innovation.

Since innovation is a complex, company-wide endeavor , it requires a set of crosscutting practices and processes to structure, organize, and encourage it. Taken together, the essentials described in this article constitute just such an operating system, as seen in Exhibit 2. These often overlapping, iterative, and nonsequential practices resist systematic categorization but can nonetheless be thought of in two groups. The first four, which are strategic and creative in nature, help set and prioritize the terms and conditions under which innovation is more likely to thrive. The next four essentials deal with how to deliver and organize for innovation repeatedly over time and with enough value to contribute meaningfully to overall performance.

To be sure, there’s no proven formula for success, particularly when it comes to innovation. While our years of client-service experience provide strong indicators for the existence of a causal relationship between the attributes that survey respondents reported and the innovations of the companies we studied, the statistics described here can only prove correlation. Yet we firmly believe that if companies assimilate and apply these essentials—in their own way, in accordance with their particular context, capabilities, organizational culture, and appetite for risk—they will improve the likelihood that they, too, can rekindle the lost spark of innovation. In the digital age, the pace of change has gone into hyperspeed, so companies must get these strategic, creative, executional, and organizational factors right to innovate successfully.

President John F. Kennedy’s bold aspiration, in 1962, to “go to the moon in this decade” motivated a nation to unprecedented levels of innovation. A far-reaching vision can be a compelling catalyst, provided it’s realistic enough to stimulate action today.

But in a corporate setting, as many CEOs have discovered, even the most inspiring words often are insufficient, no matter how many times they are repeated. It helps to combine high-level aspirations with estimates of the value that innovation should generate to meet financial-growth objectives. Quantifying an “innovation target for growth,” and making it an explicit part of future strategic plans, helps solidify the importance of and accountability for innovation. The target itself must be large enough to force managers to include innovation investments in their business plans. If they can make their numbers using other, less risky tactics, our experience suggests that they (quite rationally) will.

Establishing a quantitative innovation aspiration is not enough, however. The target value needs to be apportioned to relevant business “owners” and cascaded down to their organizations in the form of performance targets and timelines. Anything less risks encouraging inaction or the belief that innovation is someone else’s job.

For example, Lantmännen, a big Nordic agricultural cooperative, was challenged by flat organic growth and directionless innovation. Top executives created an aspirational vision and strategic plan linked to financial targets: 6 percent growth in the core business and 2 percent growth in new organic ventures. To encourage innovation projects, these quantitative targets were cascaded down to business units and, ultimately, to product groups. During the development of each innovation project, it had to show how it was helping to achieve the growth targets for its category and markets. As a result, Lantmännen went from 4 percent to 13 percent annual growth, underpinned by the successful launch of several new brands. Indeed, it became the market leader in premade food only four years after entry and created a new premium segment in this market.

Such performance parameters can seem painful to managers more accustomed to the traditional approach. In our experience, though, CEOs are likely just going through the motions if they don’t use evaluations and remuneration to assess and recognize the contribution that all top managers make to innovation.

Fresh, creative insights are invaluable, but in our experience many companies run into difficulty less from a scarcity of new ideas than from the struggle to determine which ideas to support and scale. At bigger companies, this can be particularly problematic during market discontinuities, when supporting the next wave of growth may seem too risky, at least until competitive dynamics force painful changes.

Innovation is inherently risky, to be sure, and getting the most from a portfolio of innovation initiatives is more about managing risk than eliminating it. Since no one knows exactly where valuable innovations will emerge, and searching everywhere is impractical, executives must create some boundary conditions for the opportunity spaces they want to explore. The process of identifying and bounding these spaces can run the gamut from intuitive visions of the future to carefully scrutinized strategic analyses. Thoughtfully prioritizing these spaces also allows companies to assess whether they have enough investment behind their most valuable opportunities.

During this process, companies should set in motion more projects than they will ultimately be able to finance, which makes it easier to kill those that prove less promising. RELX Group, for example, runs 10 to 15 experiments per major customer segment, each funded with a preliminary budget of around $200,000, through its innovation pipeline every year, choosing subsequently to invest more significant funds in one or two of them, and dropping the rest. “One of the hardest things to figure out is when to kill something,” says Kumsal Bayazit, RELX Group’s chief strategy officer. “It’s a heck of a lot easier if you have a portfolio of ideas.”

Once the opportunities are defined, companies need transparency into what people are working on and a governance process that constantly assesses not only the expected value, timing, and risk of the initiatives in the portfolio but also its overall composition. There’s no single mix that’s universally right. Most established companies err on the side of overloading their innovation pipelines with relatively safe, short-term, and incremental projects that have little chance of realizing their growth targets or staying within their risk parameters. Some spread themselves thinly across too many projects instead of focusing on those with the highest potential for success and resourcing them to win.

These tendencies get reinforced by a sluggish resource-reallocation process. Our research shows that a company typically reallocates only a tiny fraction of its resources from year to year, thereby sentencing innovation to a stagnating march of incrementalism. 1 1. See Stephen Hall, Dan Lovallo, and Reinier Musters, “ How to put your money where your strategy is ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 2012; and Vanessa Chan, Marc de Jong, and Vidyadhar Ranade, “ Finding the sweet spot for allocating innovation resources ,” McKinsey Quarterly , May 2014.

Innovation also requires actionable and differentiated insights—the kind that excite customers and bring new categories and markets into being. How do companies develop them? Genius is always an appealing approach, if you have or can get it. Fortunately, innovation yields to other approaches besides exceptional creativity.

The rest of us can look for insights by methodically and systematically scrutinizing three areas: a valuable problem to solve, a technology that enables a solution, and a business model that generates money from it. You could argue that nearly every successful innovation occurs at the intersection of these three elements. Companies that effectively collect, synthesize, and “collide” them stand the highest probability of success. “If you get the sweet spot of what the customer is struggling with, and at the same time get a deeper knowledge of the new technologies coming along and find a mechanism for how these two things can come together, then you are going to get good returns,” says Alcoa chairman and chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld.

The insight-discovery process, which extends beyond a company’s boundaries to include insight-generating partnerships, is the lifeblood of innovation. We won’t belabor the matter here, though, because it’s already the subject of countless articles and books. 2 2. See, for example, Marla M. Capozzi, Reneé Dye, and Amy Howe, “ Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide ,” McKinsey Quarterly , April 2011; and Marla M. Capozzi, John Horn, and Ari Kellen, “ Battle-test your innovation strategy ,” McKinsey Quarterly , December 2012. One thing we can add is that discovery is iterative, and the active use of prototypes can help companies continue to learn as they develop, test, validate, and refine their innovations. Moreover, we firmly believe that without a fully developed innovation system encompassing the other elements described in this article, large organizations probably won’t innovate successfully, no matter how effective their insight-generation process is. 

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Business-model innovations—which change the economics of the value chain, diversify profit streams, and/or modify delivery models—have always been a vital part of a strong innovation portfolio. As smartphones and mobile apps threaten to upend oldline industries, business-model innovation has become all the more urgent: established companies must reinvent their businesses before technology-driven upstarts do. Why, then, do most innovation systems so squarely emphasize new products? The reason, of course, is that most big companies are reluctant to risk tampering with their core business model until it’s visibly under threat. At that point, they can only hope it’s not too late.

Leading companies combat this troubling tendency in a number of ways. They up their game in market intelligence, the better to separate signal from noise. They establish funding vehicles for new businesses that don’t fit into the current structure. They constantly reevaluate their position in the value chain, carefully considering business models that might deliver value to priority groups of new customers. They sponsor pilot projects and experiments away from the core business to help combat narrow conceptions of what they are and do. And they stress-test newly emerging value propositions and operating models against countermoves by competitors.

Amazon does a particularly strong job extending itself into new business models by addressing the emerging needs of its customers and suppliers. In fact, it has included many of its suppliers in its customer base by offering them an increasingly wide range of services, from hosted computing to warehouse management. Another strong performer, the Financial Times , was already experimenting with its business model in response to the increasing digitalization of media when, in 2007, it launched an innovative subscription model, upending its relationship with advertisers and readers. “We went against the received wisdom of popular strategies at the time,” says Caspar de Bono, FT board member and managing director of B2B. “We were very deliberate in getting ahead of the emerging structural change, and the decisions turned out to be very successful.” In print’s heyday, 80 percent of the FT ’s revenue came from print advertising. Now, more than half of it comes from content, and two-thirds of circulation comes from digital subscriptions.

Virulent antibodies undermine innovation at many large companies. Cautious governance processes make it easy for stifling bureaucracies in marketing, legal, IT, and other functions to find reasons to halt or slow approvals. Too often, companies simply get in the way of their own attempts to innovate. A surprising number of impressive innovations from companies were actually the fruit of their mavericks, who succeeded in bypassing their early-approval processes. Clearly, there’s a balance to be maintained: bureaucracy must be held in check, yet the rush to market should not undermine the cross-functional collaboration, continuous learning cycles, and clear decision pathways that help enable innovation. Are managers with the right knowledge, skills, and experience making the crucial decisions in a timely manner, so that innovation continually moves through an organization in a way that creates and maintains competitive advantage, without exposing a company to unnecessary risk?

Companies also thrive by testing their promising ideas with customers early in the process, before internal forces impose modifications that blur the original value proposition. To end up with the innovation initially envisioned, it’s necessary to knock down the barriers  that stand between a great idea and the end user. Companies need a well-connected manager to take charge of a project and be responsible for the budget, time to market, and key specifications—a person who can say yes rather than no. In addition, the project team needs to be cross-functional in reality, not just on paper. This means locating its members in a single place and ensuring that they give the project a significant amount of their time (at least half) to support a culture that puts the innovation project’s success above the success of each function.

Cross-functional collaboration can help ensure end-user involvement throughout the development process. At many companies, marketing’s role is to champion the interests of end users as development teams evolve products and to help ensure that the final result is what everyone first envisioned. But this responsibility is honored more often in the breach than in the observance. Other companies, meanwhile, rationalize that consumers don’t necessarily know what they want until it becomes available. This may be true, but customers can certainly say what they don’t like. And the more quickly and frequently a project team gets—and uses—feedback, the more quickly it gets a great end result.

Some ideas, such as luxury goods and many smartphone apps, are destined for niche markets. Others, like social networks, work at global scale. Explicitly considering the appropriate magnitude and reach of a given idea is important to ensuring that the right resources and risks are involved in pursuing it. The seemingly safer option of scaling up over time can be a death sentence. Resources and capabilities must be marshaled to make sure a new product or service can be delivered quickly at the desired volume and quality. Manufacturing facilities, suppliers, distributors, and others must be prepared to execute a rapid and full rollout.

For example, when TomTom launched its first touch-screen navigational device, in 2004, the product flew off the shelves. By 2006, TomTom’s line of portable navigation devices reached sales of about 5 million units a year, and by 2008, yearly volume had jumped to more than 12 million. “That’s faster market penetration than mobile phones” had, says Harold Goddijn, TomTom’s CEO and cofounder. While TomTom’s initial accomplishment lay in combining a well-defined consumer problem with widely available technology components, rapid scaling was vital to the product’s continuing success. “We doubled down on managing our cash, our operations, maintaining quality, all the parts of the iceberg no one sees,” Goddijn adds. “We were hugely well organized.”

In the space of only a few years, companies in nearly every sector have conceded that innovation requires external collaborators. Flows of talent and knowledge increasingly transcend company and geographic boundaries. Successful innovators achieve significant multiples for every dollar invested in innovation by accessing the skills and talents of others. In this way, they speed up innovation and uncover new ways to create value for their customers and ecosystem partners.

Smart collaboration with external partners, though, goes beyond merely sourcing new ideas and insights; it can involve sharing costs and finding faster routes to market. Famously, the components of Apple’s first iPod were developed almost entirely outside the company; by efficiently managing these external partnerships, Apple was able to move from initial concept to marketable product in only nine months. NASA’s Ames Research Center teams up not just with international partners—launching joint satellites with nations as diverse as Lithuania, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden—but also with emerging companies, such as SpaceX.

High-performing innovators work hard to develop the ecosystems that help deliver these benefits. Indeed, they strive to become partners of choice, increasing the likelihood that the best ideas and people will come their way. That requires a systematic approach. First, these companies find out which partners they are already working with; surprisingly few companies know this. Then they decide which networks—say, four or five of them—they ideally need to support their innovation strategies. This step helps them to narrow and focus their collaboration efforts and to manage the flow of possibilities from outside the company. Strong innovators also regularly review their networks, extending and pruning them as appropriate and using sophisticated incentives and contractual structures to motivate high-performing business partners. Becoming a true partner of choice is, among other things, about clarifying what a partnership can offer the junior member: brand, reach, or access, perhaps. It is also about behavior. Partners of choice are fair and transparent in their dealings.

Moreover, companies that make the most of external networks have a good idea of what’s most useful at which stages of the innovation process. In general, they cast a relatively wide net in the early going. But as they come closer to commercializing a new product or service, they become narrower and more specific in their sourcing, since by then the new offering’s design is relatively set.

How do leading companies stimulate, encourage, support, and reward innovative behavior and thinking among the right groups of people? The best companies find ways to embed innovation into the fibers of their culture, from the core to the periphery.

They start back where we began: with aspirations that forge tight connections among innovation, strategy, and performance. When a company sets financial targets for innovation and defines market spaces, minds become far more focused. As those aspirations come to life through individual projects across the company, innovation leaders clarify responsibilities using the appropriate incentives and rewards.

The Discovery Group, for example, is upending the medical and life-insurance industries in its native South Africa and also has operations in the United Kingdom, the United States, and China, among other locations. Innovation is a standard measure in the company’s semiannual divisional scorecards—a process that helps mobilize the organization and affects roughly 1,000 of the company’s business leaders. “They are all required to innovate every year,” Discovery founder and CEO Adrian Gore says of the company’s business leaders. “They have no choice.”

Organizational changes may be necessary, not because structural silver bullets exist—we’ve looked hard for them and don’t think they do—but rather to promote collaboration, learning, and experimentation. Companies must help people to share ideas and knowledge freely, perhaps by locating teams working on different types of innovation in the same place, reviewing the structure of project teams to make sure they always have new blood, ensuring that lessons learned from success and failure are captured and assimilated, and recognizing innovation efforts even when they fall short of success.

Internal collaboration and experimentation can take years to establish, particularly in large, mature companies with strong cultures and ways of working that, in other respects, may have served them well. Some companies set up “innovation garages” where small groups can work on important projects unconstrained by the normal working environment while building new ways of working that can be scaled up and absorbed into the larger organization. NASA, for example, has ten field centers. But the space agency relies on the Ames Research Center, in Silicon Valley, to maintain what its former director, Dr. Pete Worden, calls “the character of rebels” to function as “a laboratory that’s part of a much larger organization.”

Big companies do not easily reinvent themselves as leading innovators. Too many fixed routines and cultural factors can get in the way. For those that do make the attempt, innovation excellence is often built in a multiyear effort that touches most, if not all, parts of the organization. Our experience and research suggest that any company looking to make this journey will maximize its probability of success by closely studying and appropriately assimilating the leading practices of high-performing innovators. Taken together, these form an essential operating system for innovation within a company’s organizational structure and culture.

Marc de Jong is a principal in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, Nathan Marston is a principal in the London office, and Erik Roth is a principal in the Shanghai office.

The authors wish to thank Jill Hellman and McKinsey’s Peet van Biljon for their contributions to this article.

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A New Approach to Strategic Innovation

• Haijian Si,
• Christoph Loch,
• Stelios Kavadias

Companies typically treat their innovation projects as a portfolio, aiming for a mix of projects that collectively meet their strategic objectives. The problem, say the authors, is that portfolio objectives have become standardized, and innovation projects are often only weakly related to a company’s distinctive strategy.

This article introduces a new tool to help leaders better align their innovation investments. The strategic innovation tool kit has two elements: a strategy summary framework and an innovation basket. Leaders start by clarifying a unit’s strategy and determining what needs to change to achieve it. The change needs are translated into innovation goals, and leaders create their “innovation basket” by plotting each project against those goals. They can then cut projects that aren’t aligned and create new ones that are. It’s an iterative and creative process: Projects are adjusted to fit the strategy but can also shape it.

Examples from the authors’ research demonstrate how the process of creating an innovation basket gives managers fresh insight into what their innovation activities are really doing for their strategy.

A tool for connecting your projects with your goals

Companies typically treat their innovation projects as a portfolio: a mix of projects that, collectively, aim to meet their various strategic objectives. Some projects, for instance, will improve business processes, others develop new products and services.

• HS Haijian Si is the former CEO of Chinese new energy companies Linuo Power Group Co., Huanyu Power, and Hanergy Thin Film Power and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School.
• CL Christoph Loch is a professor at and the former director (dean) of the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School.  He is also a visiting professor at PHBS Business School, Shenzhen, China
• Stelios Kavadias is the Margaret Thatcher Professor of Enterprise Studies in Innovation and Growth at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School and the director of its Entrepreneurship Centre.

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How To Write a Business Plan

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Starting a business is a wild ride, and a solid business plan can be the key to keeping you on track. A business plan is essentially a roadmap for your business — outlining your goals, strategies, market analysis and financial projections. Not only will it guide your decision-making, a business plan can help you secure funding with a loan or from investors .

Writing a business plan can seem like a huge task, but taking it one step at a time can break the plan down into manageable milestones. Here is our step-by-step guide on how to write a business plan.

Table of contents

• Write your executive summary
• Do your market research homework
• Set your business goals and objectives
• Plan your business strategy
• Describe your product or service
• Crunch the numbers
• Finalize your business plan

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Step 1: Write your executive summary

Though this will be the first page of your business plan , we recommend you actually write the executive summary last. That’s because an executive summary highlights what’s to come in the business plan but in a more condensed fashion.

An executive summary gives stakeholders who are reading your business plan the key points quickly without having to comb through pages and pages. Be sure to cover each successive point in a concise manner, and include as much data as necessary to support your claims.

You’ll cover other things too, but answer these basic questions in your executive summary:

• Idea: What’s your business concept? What problem does your business solve? What are your business goals?
• Product: What’s your product/service and how is it different?
• Market: Who’s your audience? How will you reach customers?
• Finance: How much will your idea cost? And if you’re seeking funding, how much money do you need? How much do you expect to earn? If you’ve already started, where is your revenue at now?

Step 2: Do your market research homework

The next step in writing a business plan is to conduct market research . This involves gathering information about your target market (or customer persona), your competition, and the industry as a whole. You can use a variety of research methods such as surveys, focus groups, and online research to gather this information. Your method may be formal or more casual, just make sure that you’re getting good data back.

This research will help you to understand the needs of your target market and the potential demand for your product or service—essential aspects of starting and growing a successful business.

Step 3: Set your business goals and objectives

Once you’ve completed your market research, you can begin to define your business goals and objectives. What is the problem you want to solve? What’s your vision for the future? Where do you want to be in a year from now?

Use this step to decide what you want to achieve with your business, both in the short and long term. Try to set SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound benchmarks—that will help you to stay focused and motivated as you build your business.

Step 4: Plan your business strategy

Your business strategy is how you plan to reach your goals and objectives. This includes details on positioning your product or service, marketing and sales strategies, operational plans, and the organizational structure of your small business.

Make sure to include key roles and responsibilities for each team member if you’re in a business entity with multiple people.

Step 5: Describe your product or service

In this section, get into the nitty-gritty of your product or service. Go into depth regarding the features, benefits, target market, and any patents or proprietary tech you have. Make sure to paint a clear picture of what sets your product apart from the competition—and don’t forget to highlight any customer benefits.

Step 6: Crunch the numbers

Financial analysis is an essential part of your business plan. If you’re already in business that includes your profit and loss statement , cash flow statement and balance sheet .

These financial projections will give investors and lenders an understanding of the financial health of your business and the potential return on investment.

You may want to work with a financial professional to ensure your financial projections are realistic and accurate.

Step 7: Finalize your business plan

Once you’ve completed everything, it's time to finalize your business plan. This involves reviewing and editing your plan to ensure that it is clear, concise, and easy to understand.

You should also have someone else review your plan to get a fresh perspective and identify any areas that may need improvement. You could even work with a free SCORE mentor on your business plan or use a SCORE business plan template for more detailed guidance.

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The takeaway

Writing a business plan is an essential process for any forward-thinking entrepreneur or business owner. A business plan requires a lot of up-front research, planning, and attention to detail, but it’s worthwhile. Creating a comprehensive business plan can help you achieve your business goals and secure the funding you need.

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• How to Get a Business License: What You Need to Know
• What Is a Cash Flow Statement?

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70 Small Business Ideas for Anyone Who Wants to Run Their Own Business

Published: March 19, 2024

A good business idea may seem hard to come by, but with some planning and preparation, you can easily launch a small business to supplement your income — or become your own full-time boss.

Maybe you already have an idea of the business you’d like to start. But while you might feel ready for a new venture and passionate about your idea, you might be looking for some direction.

To help get you started, here's a list of small business ideas separated into a few sections:

• What makes a good small business?

Best Small Business Ideas

Best businesses to start with little money, home business ideas.

• Online Businesses Ideas

Easy Businesses to Start

Business ideas for students, creative small business ideas, how to start a small business at home, starting a small business: faq.

The first step to becoming a successful entrepreneur is finding a business idea that works for you. In this article, you’ll find dozens of small business ideas you can start from home and scale up as your clientele grows. Let’s get started.

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What makes a good small business idea?

Not all small business ideas are made equal: Some require more effort and funding than others, while some can be launched with few resources — or resources you already have. As a potential small business owner, you’ll want to save as much money as possible on training, rent, supplies, and other necessities.

Let’s go over what makes a good business idea:

• Requires little to no training . A good small business idea will ideally leverage your existing field of expertise and require little to no training. That will not only shorten your time-to-launch, but also lessen your expenses, since training courses can cost a significant amount of money. Plus, you’ll be more confident offering services that you feel prepared to deliver.
• Requires low setup costs. Your business should be cheap to start. Maybe you only need to purchase a website domain or buy a desk for your garage.
• Requires little hands-on inventory or supply management . A great business idea needs few supplies and little inventory management. If you want to sell physical goods, you can either try drop-shipping and manually make goods in small batches.
• Is based online . The best small business ideas are based online and can be carried out from your personal computer. This will automatically lower your commuting costs and give you greater flexibility over your personal and work life.
• Can sustainably be managed by few people . As a small business owner, you won’t have the funds to hire other people to help you run your business — at least not at first. A good business idea should give you the ability to run your business on your own.

Airbnb Co-founder, Brian Chesky, said, “If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life.”

If you’re like Brian and you’ve already thought about a solution for a problem you encounter in your life — or you’re on the path to doing so — then starting a small business may be in your future. It may also be for you if you dream of clocking out of your nine-to-five job for the last time and becoming your own boss.

Below, we include the best ideas for you to start your small business — with resources and examples to help you get started.

1. Handyman

8. Life/Career Coach

If you have experience navigating career, personal, and social transitions successfully, put it to good use as a life or career coach. Many of us are looking for guidance in our careers — and finding someone with the time to mentor us can be tough.

Life/career coaches don’t come cheap, but they are able to offer clients the intense and hands-on training and advice they need to make serious moves in their personal and professional lives. After all, everyone needs some uplifting advice from time to time.

To start your life/career coaching business with confidence, you can look for a certification program (like the Life Coach School’s or Diane Hudson’s ), then apply your skills as you acquire new clients.

A resume writing business is economical, has few overhead costs, and has few educational requirements. We still recommend having an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree and a few resume samples on hand. If you still feel that you need to brush up on your resume writing skills, you can take a course like Coursera’s or LinkedIn Learning’s .

Once you’ve gotten resume writing down, you can expand your business to include cover letter writing and even offer career coaching services in conjunction with these services.

10. Freelance Writer

If you have writing skills , there’s someone out there willing to pay you for them. Write blog posts, magazine articles, and website copy galore — just make sure you have a body of work built up to share with potential clients. Even if you create a few sample pieces to have on hand, they’ll help exhibit your work and attract new business.

To become a freelance writer, it’s essential to choose a specialty. For instance, you might choose to only write for publications in the healthcare industry (maybe because you were previously a healthcare worker) or focus on lifestyle publications. Whatever the case, specializing will help you find your niche market and gain confidence as a new freelancer writer.

There are no educational requirements for freelance writing, but you do need strong writing skills. It also helps to enjoy writing. While certification may be beneficial, getting practice and writing every day is more important. Try these writing prompts to start.

11. Landscaper

Mowing, tree-trimming, and seasonal decor are all neighborhood needs. If you have or can acquire the equipment, a landscaping business can be a lucrative affair. It’s also a great choice if you enjoy doing it for your own home and have a good eye for landscape design.

The good news is that you can start small. For instance, you could offer your neighbors seasonal planting services and start with a few perennial plants, or simply offer mulching services.

To grow your landscaping business, you should consider taking some formal training. The following organizations offer courses:

• New York Botanical Gardens

After completing a course and getting enough experience, you can apply for a certificate from a landscaping organization. While a certificate isn’t necessary to work in the field, it can build your credentials and help you make industry connections to take your landscaping business to the next level. The Association of Professional Landscape Designers offers one potential certificate you could pursue.

Some states require licensure, especially if you’ll be using pesticides and fertilizers. Be sure to review the requirements for your state.

Learn some of the basics now with this video on landscape design from Lowe’s:

12. Videographer

Video production requires you to have invested in the equipment up front, which can be quite expensive. But that’s also what makes your services so valuable. Make sure you have a reel of your work to share or create a website with several selections of your work available for interested viewers.

There are no educational or licensure requirements for starting a video production business. As with writing and other creative arts, though, it pays to specialize. Real estate videos differ radically from wedding videos, and wedding videos differ radically from in-studio interviews and testimonials. By specializing, you target a highly specific customer who’ll benefit the most from your services, and you can also skill-up more effectively in one shooting style.

While you can find general classes on videography, you should consider taking a class in the type of videography you’d like to do. For instance, you could take The Complete Wedding Videography Course .

Hot tip: If you’re interested in specializing in video marketing, check out The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing and download our starter pack below.

13. Photographer

Start by conducting photo shoots for your family and friends. As you build a body of work, ask for referrals and reviews. Photography businesses often grow by word of mouth, so create a Facebook page where you can tag recent clients. Photos where you tag those clients will show up in their friends’ newsfeeds, where they can view your work. You can also ask them to leave reviews on your Facebook business page.

Like with a video production small business, you’ll want to specialize. Will you do product shoots or portraits? How about wedding or fashion photo shoots? Once you specialize, you’ll be able to create a body of work that most accurately represents your strengths.

There are no educational or licensure requirements for starting a small photography business. Still, we recommend investing in a few photography courses, especially if you haven’t used your camera in a while. Some courses you might start with include:

• Cornell’s Digital Photography Certificate Program
• New York Institute of Photography’s Course

From there, seek courses that help you build skills in your chosen specialty.

If you’re not sure where to start with freelance photography, take a look at Erica Clayton’s journey into the business below. Her advice? Give yourself a firm deadline to turn a profit.

14. Bed and Breakfast Owner

Some consulting industries are more competitive than others, so be sure to complete your research before starting a small consulting business. One way to find out how competitive a consulting niche is by doing keyword search . If your target niche is highly searched or is already dominated by big companies, you may have a harder time breaking in. You can use keyword research tools to uncover keyword volume and local demand.

If there’s room for you to enter the market, the next step is to land your first clients. Be sure to participate in local networking events covering your niche and reach out to potential prospects through cold calling and emailing. Investing in dedicated sales software can also help measure and improve your emailing strategy, as well as keep track of worthwhile leads.  

12. Event Planner

An event planning business is an excellent choice if you have great organizational and interpersonal skills, and it’s relatively cheap to start. You might choose to specialize in a specific type of event — like weddings or company meetings — or set yourself up as an event planner of all trades.

The good news is that event planners are always in demand. It’s not an easily automated job, so this small business idea is set to thrive regardless of the digital landscape. To start, you’ll want to look for a platform that will easily allow you to advertise your availability, such as event planner directories like Eventective and WeddingWire .

If you’re highly organized, detail-oriented, and have experience planning large events, it might be time for others to benefit from your skills.

13. Personal Assistant

Personal assistants help business owners and executives take care of administrative tasks. To launch a freelance personal assistant business, you should leverage networking opportunities on LinkedIn and attend small business events at local chambers of commerce. Most local business owners might not even know they need a personal assistant until you market your services to them.

If you’re an organized, highly-detailed person, the life of a personal assistant might be for you. Don’t want to be tied to one office or person all day, every day? Consider becoming a virtual assistant, which allows you a more flexible work environment.

To become an assistant, choose a niche — will you be helping women business owners specifically? Do you have a specific field of expertise, like bookkeeping? A website can also go a long way, and be sure to print business cards for you to hand out during networking events.

14. Consignment Shop Owner

If you have an eye for style but don’t want to invest in the inventory of a brand-new boutique, consider starting a consignment shop. It will allow you to curate a collection of clothing that matches your goals and aesthetic without the overhead of a boutique selling entirely new garments.

The beauty of a small consignment business is that you can now start one online. You can sign up on a platform such as Poshmark , Depop , and even Etsy , then easily start selling your own used fashion from home.

Once you’ve defined your niche — such as vintage clothing, unique locally made art, or colorful shoes — you can begin sourcing new products from your local stores and thrift shops.

15. Caterer

If the personal chef gig is too restrictive for your schedule, consider catering instead. Pick your projects, work on fewer but larger events, and hone in on your time management skills.

Becoming a caterer is a natural step for those who are used to cooking for large events — for instance, you may have already catered your friend’s wedding or brought a 20-person meal to a potluck (that counts, too!).

It’s essential that you have enough temperature-regulated storage for the meals prior to each event, and that you arrange for reliable, temperature-controlled transportation to and from your home kitchen. Alternatively, you can lower your costs by inviting customers to pick up their order at your home.

16. Gym Owner

Kickboxing gyms, yoga studios, CrossFit, oh my! Turn your passion for fitness into a community for others by creating your own gym — start one from the ground up, become an affiliate, or open a franchise location.

Available franchise opportunities include Anytime Fitness, Orangetheory Fitness, Pure Barre, Planet Fitness, Crunch Fitness, and more. Be prepared to take out a loan to finance your franchise — most agreements start with fees upward of $20,000. But the payoff can be tremendous due to brand recognition. You’ll have no trouble recruiting new members as long as you use local marketing strategies .

Alternatively, you can create a local studio, but ideally, it should be for a specific activity instead of general fitness. Yoga, pilates, bootcamp-style gyms, and martial arts perform well as independent fitness studios.

17. Boutique Agency Owner

What’s your specialty? Whether it’s marketing, social media, or PR, it might be time to start your own agency. Many other small businesses need this type of help but don’t have the resources or volume to necessitate a full-time position.

To start an agency, you would ideally have worked in your specialty for a number of years. You should also be prepared to interface directly with clients, fulfill their requirements, and temper their expectations (if they want results in an unreasonably short amount of time).

Consider building a small team and learn from other entrepreneurs who’ve successfully started their own agencies, like Duane Brown of Take Some Risk .

18. Coffee Shop Owner

Turn your caffeine addiction into something a little more lucrative. Opening a franchise or buying an existing shop are lower-risk entry points to the coffee game, but they usually require a little more cash upfront. Starting a shop from scratch requires more planning and work — but it also maximizes your earning potential in the future.

A coffee shop is an excellent fit if you already have a full-time remote job and wish to supplement your income with a small business. You can manage the coffee shop as you work at one of the tables, but be sure to have the budget to hire an experienced barista who can pick up the slack.

If you would like to open a coffee shop and run it full-time on your own, you’ll need to undertake barista training, understand worldwide coffee sources, and have excellent customer service skills.

19. Moving Company

A truck, moving equipment, manpower, and the correct permits and insurance are the building blocks of starting your own moving company . Before you buy your first fleet of trucks, however, start small with a moving van and keep your costs low.

Still sound like too much of an initial investment? Consider offering packing services only, which have a much lower financial barrier to entry. You can partner with moving companies and offer to do their packing, or have them refer clients to you.

You could even take a niche approach to the industry as Astro International has by offering international moving services.

2. Vending Machine Owner

Since 2015, the growth rate for vending machine businesses has increased 1.4%. Even as social distancing restrictions are still in place, this business can still be lucrative if you choose the right locations. High-traffic is key — places like hospitals, schools, and community centers are smart places to start placing your machines to generate enough revenue to cover cost and turn a profit.

3. Social Media Manager

Do you have a knack for social media? As a social media manager, you can use your skills to manage the social media accounts for companies and even individual people. Influencer marketing has become more common and many influencers rely on marketing agencies or employees to help them run their social channels.

Online Business Ideas

If you want a business idea that you can run entirely online, check out the ones below. These ideas are ideal for those looking for a passive income stream. In other words, you shouldn’t need to do too much manual work to launch these businesses from your home or preferred business location.

1. Become an online reseller.

To become an online reseller, all you need is some business savvy and some funds to invest in product stock from manufacturers — or, of course,the willingness to sell your own used items. Generally, this is a low-touch but high-performance way of creating a passive income online business.

Online resellers usually use a platform, such as Facebook Marketplace or Amazon Sellers, to sell either their own or manufacturers’ stock. The benefit of using Facebook Marketplace is that you can begin today with your own Facebook account, and simply list items that you already own.

Interested buyers typically drive directly to your home for pick-up — but if you’re not interested in human interaction, you can leave it outside and have the buyer pay via an online platform.

Blogging is one of the most accessible small businesses to start, and there are countless niches to choose from. That said, because there are many blogs online, you’ll need to learn blog SEO and keyword research to ensure your audience finds you. That way, you actually make money out of your blogging efforts.

The great news is that a small blogging business has a ridiculously low overhead. All you need is a custom domain and your time for writing blog posts. Although finding the right topic ideas and outlining your posts may seem challenging at first, especially if you’re new to writing, you can let a blog ideas generator do most of the grunt work for you.

These tools leverage Artificial Intelligence to help you brainstorm ideas and set up your content structure. That way, you can kickstart your creative juices and begin writing about what you love right away. 

5. Home-Baked Goods Seller

Warehouse-made, store-bought chocolate chip cookies will never compare to a batch made with love in someone’s home. Simple desserts can be easily baked and packaged to sell at local events or around your neighborhood. Use custom labels and watch the word spread about your goods!

You can begin a baked goods business easily by opening a Facebook and Instagram profile. Facebook and Instagram are both excellent platforms to market your goods, show pictures of your previous baked products, and even showcase happy clients.

Build a loyal following slowly, and save on costs by asking clients to drive to your home to pick up their order. Choosing a niche can be helpful here, or baking in a specific style that can’t be found at grocery store bakeries. The overhead can be especially low if you already have most essential baking supplies.

6. Ecommerce Store Owner

Do you create, collect, or curate anything special? Consider starting an ecommerce store and turning your hobby into a full-time job. Whether you need somewhere to sell all that pottery you’ve been making, or an excuse to search for the sports memorabilia you love tracking down, an ecommerce store can make it financially viable for you to pursue your passion.

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Starting an ecommerce store is simple and easy. You can set up a shop using an ecommerce website builder , all of which start at a minimal monthly subscription (some even start at free). Be sure to take good photos of your products and write descriptive product pages .

If you don’t have inventory, you can always own an ecommerce store by using dropshipping . Instead of creating and shipping your products yourself, you’ll instead partner with a dropshipping website and have them mail out the orders directly to your client.

7. House Cleaner

With a low barrier to entry, house cleaning can be a great way to start doing what you love — soon. Consider advertising to homes in your neighborhood and get more bang for your buck by earning a few small businesses as clients as well. They’ll usually bring in a higher paycheck for a similar amount of work.

To become a house cleaner, you should be prepared to invest in cleaning supplies and accessories, or be willing to use your own. If you plan to serve small businesses, you should buy industrial janitorial supplies so you can get work done more effectively.

Need some inspiration? This small business cleaning service grew virtually overnight on Instagram after their content went viral during the pandemic.

Get HubSpot's Free CRM Software

4. create a business plan..

No business plan? No business. Particularly if your small business idea requires investors, you'll need to draft up a business plan to provide an overview of your market positioning, your financial projections, and your unique competitive advantages. You can download HubSpot's free business plan templates for free to get started.

Learn more about choosing the right structure for your business from the Small Business Administration.

6. Create a business bank account.

Once you have a legally formed business and have been issued an Employer Identification Number (EIN), open a bank account specifically for your business. Having a business bank account is essential for keeping your personal and business finances separate which can help you gain an accurate picture of your business’s cash flow and financial health.

Additionally, keeping your personal and business finances separate makes bookkeeping and tax preparation easier.

Many banks offer business checking and savings accounts. Business checking accounts typically do not have a limit on the number of transactions that can take place, and issue a debit card that can be used for making business purchases. However, these checking accounts do not accrue interest.

Business savings accounts typically earn interest over time but have a limited number of transactions that can occur each month. When you’re just starting out, look for a business bank account that does not have a minimum balance requirement so you are not penalized for having low funds as you work to build your business.

7. Determine if your business idea works well from home.

Ask yourself whether your business idea will work well from home. Some businesses simply aren’t suited to be based from home. If you want to run a dog boarding center but live in an apartment without a backyard, you might want to consider a dog walking business instead.

8. Set up an office.

If your business idea is well-suited for being run from home, it’s still important you have a designated workspace. While a home office might not be possible, consider setting aside a corner in your living room or putting a desk in your bedroom for a space that inspires you and creates the conditions for success.

Need a more professional space? If you conduct client-facing work requiring you to be on video calls, no one wants to see your rumpled sheets in the background. Check out local coworking spaces for memberships that earn you access to conference rooms, desk space, and more.

9. Get to work!

You’ve put in the hard work, but I’ve got bad news — it’s only going to get harder. But most entrepreneurs will agree that the payoff of being your own boss, making your own hours, and working on projects that you’re passionate about will pay dividends for the rest of your life.

What are the types of small businesses?

The types of small business structures are sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies (LLCs), and corporations.

• Sole Proprietorship — The simplest type of business structure is a sole proprietorship, which is also the easiest to start. As a sole proprietor, you are personally responsible for the business's liabilities and profits, and you have complete control over your business. If you are a solopreneur, you are automatically considered a sole proprietor.
• Partnership — A partnership is a business model involving two or more individuals who agree to share the business‘s profits and liabilities. Each partner contributes to the business and shares the risks and rewards. It’s essential to have a partnership agreement that defines each partner's roles and responsibilities to ensure clarity and prevent potential misunderstandings.
• Limited Liability Company (LLC) — An LLC, or limited liability company, is a common option for small businesses because it protects its owners by separating personal assets from the company's liabilities. To form an LLC, the business owner must file the required paperwork with the state.
• Corporation — A corporation is an independent legal entity distinct from its owners. It provides limited liability protection to its shareholders, who are not held personally accountable for the company's debts. Corporations have formal requirements and often raise capital by issuing stocks or shares.

Which business type is best?

The best business type is a limited liability company (LLC). Operating as an LLC means that your personal assets are separate from your business assets. If your business goes bankrupt, your personal holdings won’t be affected. That said, it’s also one of the costlier types, requiring a fee paid to the state.

The easiest business type to start is a sole proprietorship. The main downside is that there’s no differentiation between you and your business.

It's crucial to seek advice from legal or accounting professionals to determine the best business structure based on your unique needs and objectives. Each structure has advantages, legal requirements, tax implications, and flexibility considerations.

How do I create a business idea?

To create a business idea, determine your skill set, work preferences, startup budget, and available resources. It’s important to strike the right balance between what you can feasibly offer and what you can feasibly afford in the short and long term.

We recommend starting with your skill set so that you can easily determine the niche in which you can effectively compete. For instance, if you have ample experience as a writer, you might consider starting a freelance writing business. But if you know you’d prefer to work with clients face-to-face, you might choose to start a ghostwriting business instead. That’s why it’s so important to take your work preferences into account, as well.

After that, take a look at your budget and determine the type of business you can start based on the resources at your disposal. For instance, you might not be able to afford a physical office or location, so a location-based business will likely not be a good fit. In that case, starting an online business is your best option.

What resources or tools can I use to refine and validate my business ideas during the brainstorming process?

Online market research tools like Google Trends, Keyword Planner, and SEMrush can provide insights into market demand, competition, and keyword trends related to your business niche. Industry reports and market analyses from reputable sources such as IBISWorld, Gartner, Statista, and industry-specific publications can offer valuable data and trends to inform your decision-making. Ensure you know the industry risk before embarking on your small business venture.

→ Download Now: Market Research Kit [Free Download]

Additionally, joining entrepreneurial communities, forums, and social media groups can provide opportunities to seek feedback, network with like-minded people, and gain insights from experienced entrepreneurs. Finally, consider conducting surveys or interviews with potential customers to gather feedback and validate your business concept before investing significant time and resources.

What are some of the most successful small businesses?

Every small business has the potential to be successful and profitable, provided it’s backed by a strong product-market fit and a robust business plan . These two elements are essential. Maybe postnatal services are one of the most successful small businesses to launch, but if you live in an area with declining population or a large elderly population, then that small business idea won’t yield a high return on investment.

Think carefully about the market where you’re launching your business, and you’ll be more than likely to see lasting success.

What are the top growing small businesses?

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Innovator Founder Visa Business Plan

Anne morris.

• 25 March 2024

IN THIS SECTION

The innovator founder visa is a new immigration route that opened to applicants on 13 April 2023. This replaces the previous innovator and start-up visas, and is now the primary visa category for overseas entrepreneurs looking to set up an innovative business in the UK.

However, even though this route introduces several favourable changes to attract foreign entrepreneurial talent to the UK — including removal of the requirement to invest a minimum of £50,000 and relaxation of the secondary employment rules — any new business venture must still be endorsed by an approved body. This means that all applicants seeking endorsement under the ‘new business’ criteria on the innovator founder route, must produce a detailed and persuasive business plan to demonstrate to the endorsing body that the idea for their proposed UK business is innovative, viable and scalable.

Below we provide some practical guidance on how to write an innovator founder visa business plan, one that will provide the applicant with the best possible chance of successfully securing an endorsement so that they can go on to apply for a visa.

Innovator founder visa: new business criteria

There are three types of endorsement that an endorsing body can given under this route: an endorsement for a new business, for the same business or to support an application for settlement, all with different criteria to reflect the stage at which a business should be at.

However, when it comes to a brand new business venture in the UK, in order to receive that all important endorsement letter — containing a unique reference number to be able to apply for the innovator founder visa — the applicant must satisfy what is known as the ‘new business’ criteria. Under this criteria, the applicant must show that their idea is:

• Innovative: where the applicant has created an original business plan meeting new or existing market needs and/or creating a competitive advantage
• Viable: this business plan is both realistic and achievable based on the applicant’s available resources, where the applicant must have the necessary knowledge, skills, experience and market awareness to be able to successfully run the new business
• Scalable: there must be clear evidence of structured planning, with potential for job creation, together with growth into both national and international markets.

The ‘new business’ criteria are in addition to the various immigration requirements that an applicant will need to satisfy when applying for a visa from UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), including an English language and maintenance requirement. However, endorsing bodies are perceived as far better placed than UKVI caseworkers to identify innovative business ideas and assess the viability of those ideas in the context of what the applicant can contribute in terms of knowledge, skills, experience and market awareness.

The role of the business plan in Innovator Founder visa applications

To be successful in an application for an innovator founder visa, receiving an endorsement from an approved body is mandatory. The Innovator Founder visa business plan will be critical in securing your business’ endorsement.

The business plan will be used to assess whether your business venture is eligible for endorsement. It is not only the key document in establishing the ‘innovative’ requirement, where the applicant must have an original business plan that meets new or existing market needs and/or creates a competitive advantage, the business plan must also show how the business is both viable and scalable.

Below we set out how to approach these three key criteria — innovation, viability and scalability — within the business plan:

As part of the ‘innovation’ criterion, the applicant must have an innovative business idea to bring to the UK market. When assessing if an application meets this innovative requirement, the endorsing body will consider the following three core principles:

• a business proposition that demonstrates a clear and compelling unique selling proposition (USP). The USP should define and describe what it is about the product(s) or service(s) the business will be selling that differentiates these from its competitors;
• a concept for innovation within the proposed business that demonstrates a business proposition not easily replicable by others ‘and’ can demonstrate reasonable barriers of market entry to otherwise replicating the proposed innovation;
• an innovation element central to the success of the business proposition and one that will be primarily delivered within that business.

Business plan proposals that will not be considered as meeting the innovative standard include where the innovation element and associated research, design or implementation is largely outsourced to a third-party provider or, alternatively, a generic business idea with an only incidental innovation proposition, for example, a cleaning or taxi company “with an app”. The applicant must be able to clearly articulate within their plan what the research and development proposition looks like. They must also demonstrate a strong case for how their idea is new to the market and present a clear route to commercialisation.

As part of the ‘viability’ criterion, the applicant’s business plan must be both realistic and achievable based on the applicant’s available resources. The applicant must also have, or be in the process of actively developing, the necessary knowledge, skills, experience and market awareness to successfully run their proposed new business. In assessing these two core requirements, the endorsing body will consider a number of key questions, including:

• whether the applicant has access to sufficient funds to deliver the proposed business
• whether the supporting financial projections can be credibly defended
• whether the applicant can show that they have the necessary knowledge, skills and experience to credibly deliver the project in question, and
• if there is a credible demand for the business’s proposed product(s) and/or service(s).

The applicant must be able to show that they have undertaken rigorous and credible research around minimum set up costs, such as the price of buying in equipment and operating factory or laboratory space, and have considered and researched market demand and pricing. The applicant must also be able to show that the business will have access to a sufficient level of funding and the financial forecasts can be adequately defended.

Finally, the applicant must show that they and any co-founding entrepreneurial team have the necessary skills, knowledge and/or experience to credibly be capable of successfully developing and delivering the product(s) or service(s) to the UK market.

Scalability

As part of the ‘scalability’ criterion, the endorsing body will consider the following:

• evidence of structured planning demonstrating a credible path to business growth
• potential for ongoing high quality and skilled job creation
• scope for growth into both national and international markets
• projections based on credible market and other research.

The applicant must be able to show that they have completed their market research and have evidence of the demand for their product(s) and/or service(s), and be able to point to domestic and international customers that they intend to market to. The applicant must also articulate within their business plan a credibly costed and researched approach to how both production and sales can be scaled to serve this potential market demand.

What to include the Innovator Founder visa business plan

In addition to a proposed business venture being ‘innovative, viable and scalable’, the endorsing body will also be required to assess the applicant’s role within the proposed business, including their contribution to the creation of the business plan itself.

The applicant does not need to be the sole founder of the business, but must still be a key part of the founding team. As such, the business plan should make it clear that the applicant is either the sole founder or an instrumental member of the founding team ‘and’ that they have generated or made a significant contribution to the ideas contained within their business plan. The plan must also make it clear that the applicant will have a day-to-day role in the UK in carrying out that plan, describing how the applicant will manage and develop the business. This is because the innovator founder route, as with the predecessor routes, is designed to support an applicant in setting up and running a new business in the UK, rather than simply investing in an existing business without any other contribution.

There are various factors that the endorsing body will consider as part of making these assessments, including the circumstances surrounding the creation of the business venture and the applicant’s role in that, as well as their role in creating the business plan. Careful consideration will also be given to any explanation offered by the applicant as to how their knowledge, skills and experience will enable the delivery of the innovation proposition within the business. For example, where the applicant has a clear founding leadership role within the business and has had a genuine involvement in putting the business plan together, and where it is clear that they have the specific knowledge and skills necessary to the founding of that business, they are likely to satisfy the ‘other new business criteria’.

Finally, the applicant must also agree to attend two contact meetings with their endorsing body in the event that they are granted an innovator founder visa. These meetings, one at 12 months and one at 24 months, are so that the endorsing body can regularly monitor the progress of the business, ensuring that the applicant is making sufficient progress against their previously endorsed business plan and is involved in the day-to-day management and development of their business, as intended. By setting out the applicant’s agreement to these meetings within the business plan, this will help to illustrate a thorough understanding of their obligations and how their role within the business will be key to its success.

Under rules introduced in March 2024, there is now a charge of £500 per contact meeting for most Innovator Founder visa holders. Exemptions apply to those with limited leave to remain under Appendix Innovator, Appendix Innovator Founder or Appendix Start up.

What information should an innovator founder business plan contain?

When it comes to the information to include within a business plan, again much will depend on the nature of the proposed business idea and how best the applicant feels they can present that idea. However, the following basic structure can help to ensure that an applicant provides all of the key information required by an endorsing body:

• The applicant’s name and the name of their proposed new business
• The names of any entrepreneurial team members who are also seeking endorsement
• An executive summary or overview of the business proposal
• A detailed description of the business and its main product(s) and/or service(s)
• A detailed description of the applicant’s role in founding the business
• A detailed description of how the innovation, viability and scalability requirements have been met, including any key challenges or risks and how these will be resolved
• A detailed description of the applicant’s proposed role in their new business
• The applicant’s agreement to attend 12 and 24 month contact meetings to assess their business progress under the checkpoint monitoring requirement.

The business plan is the main document that will showcase the potential of the applicant’s business idea, where the executive summary should set out the business’s mission, vision and strategic direction, highlighting the key objectives and how the applicant intends to achieve them. The business description should then provide a comprehensive overview of the business, including what the business will do, the industry it will operate in, the legal structure and its location. Detail should also be given as to product line and services, market analysis, organisation and management, as well as marketing and sales strategy.

However, when addressing each of the ‘new business’ criterion, it is important not to shy away from any potential challenges and risks that the applicant may have identified. By highlighting these challenges and risks within the business plan, provided the applicant can clearly illustrate how these will be addressed, this will help to provide reassurance to the endorsing body that the business will work. By omitting any potential problems from the plan altogether, this may undermine the proposal and show weakness rather than strength.

Importantly, in addition to assessing whether an applicant and their proposed new business meet the relevant ‘new business’ requirements, the endorsing body will need to undertake a due diligence assessment to ensure that the applicant is a fit and proper person whose source of wealth is legitimate and that any funds associated with their business activities can be legitimately accounted for. This means that the applicant will also need to provide sufficient detail within their business plan around the source of the funding for their proposed venture, together with a declaration of suitability for endorsement.

The official online Home Office guidance for endorsing bodies provides a list of the types of activities that would make an applicant unsuitable for endorsement, such as prior convictions for money laundering or corruption, where a declaration will be sought from the applicant to confirm if any of these activities apply to them. For completeness, by including this declaration within the applicant’s business plan, this will help to demonstrate the applicant’s understanding of the endorsement process and that both they, and their proposed business, are suitable to be endorsed for an innovator founder visa.

How to structure your innovator founder visa business plan

When it comes to what a business plan should look like, there is no standard layout or set formula that must be used. This will very much depend on the nature of the proposed business and how best the applicant feels they can present their innovative business idea.

However, the business plan must be well-considered and clearly laid out, ensuring that each of the relevant criterion are addressed in turn ‘and’ in sufficient detail. It is also important to show passion and commitment to the proposal, where the endorsing body will not just be looking at the business idea alone, but the applicant’s capability to make it succeed.

Still, writing a business plan is not easy, where an applicant’s skills may lie more in technical development of their innovative product or service, rather than in articulating their proposals in writing. As such, it is often advisable to seek expert advice and assistance from an immigration specialist before seeking endorsement and submitting any plan. In this way, the applicant can maximise the prospects of being successfully endorsed.

Need assistance?

DavidsonMorris are recognised leaders in UK business immigration. For specialist advice on the Innovator Founder route endorsement requirements and visa applications , contact us .

Innovator Founder visa business plan FAQs

How much investment is required for innovator founder visa uk.

Under the innovator founder route, there is no arbitrary minimum investment requirement although an applicant must still have sufficient funds to establish their business and make it grow.

How much is the innovator founder visa?

To apply for an innovator founder visa, the application fee is £1,036. However, to be eligible to apply, an applicant must first secure endorsement for their innovative business idea. The fee payable to the endorsing body is £1,000, excluding VAT.

How to get endorsed for innovator founder visa?

To get endorsed for an innovator founder visa, an overseas entrepreneur must submit their business plan and supporting documentation to one of the four endorsing bodies and pay a fee of £1,000, plus VAT.

Last updated: 25 March 2024

Founder and Managing Director Anne Morris is a fully qualified solicitor and trusted adviser to large corporates through to SMEs, providing strategic immigration and global mobility advice to support employers with UK operations to meet their workforce needs through corporate immigration.

She is a recognised by Legal 500 and Chambers as a legal expert and delivers Board-level advice on business migration and compliance risk management as well as overseeing the firm’s development of new client propositions and delivery of cost and time efficient processing of applications.

Anne is an active public speaker, immigration commentator , and immigration policy contributor and regularly hosts training sessions for employers and HR professionals

• Anne Morris https://www.davidsonmorris.com/author/anne/ Right to Work: Prove & Check Eligibility
• Anne Morris https://www.davidsonmorris.com/author/anne/ Skilled Worker Visa Fees & Sponsor Costs 2024
• Anne Morris https://www.davidsonmorris.com/author/anne/ Right to Work Check: Employer Compliance Guide
• Anne Morris https://www.davidsonmorris.com/author/anne/ Skilled Worker Visa Minimum Salary 2024

About DavidsonMorris

As employer solutions lawyers, DavidsonMorris offers a complete and cost-effective capability to meet employers’ needs across UK immigration and employment law, HR and global mobility .

Led by Anne Morris, one of the UK’s preeminent immigration lawyers, and with rankings in The Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners , we’re a multi-disciplinary team helping organisations to meet their people objectives, while reducing legal risk and nurturing workforce relations.

Legal Disclaimer

The matters contained in this article are intended to be for general information purposes only. This article does not constitute legal advice, nor is it a complete or authoritative statement of the law, and should not be treated as such. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the information is correct at the time of writing, no warranty, express or implied, is given as to its accuracy and no liability is accepted for any error or omission. Before acting on any of the information contained herein, expert legal advice should be sought.

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50+ Unique & Innovative Business Ideas in India & Around the World

For centuries our race has survived with its survival instincts. But a lot of us are now paying the price in terms of health and environment for thoughtless businesses implementations. Today we need some unique and innovative business ideas that help us live sustainably without disrupting nature & life around us.

Today, we need many more such great business ideas more then ever.

Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it. Paul McCartney (English musician)

Yes, our earth is the only known planet that has the life. We have been using its resources for generations. However, today we need to be aware of how we are using its resources.

When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible…. To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves. Bobby McLeod (Aboriginal Activist & Poet)

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When you choose to implement your online business idea, you will need a powerful hosting service to start. Bluehost is a world class hosting service at economical rates. Get a 50% discount with my bluehost link . You can also try out the service as they come with a 30 day refund if you are dissatisfied. Also I must mention that they are recommended as the preferred hosting service by wordpress the number one & most popular CMS in the world.

10+ Unique Business Ideas Around the World

Entrepreneurs today are coming up with some unique business ideas around the world. The great business ideas not only helps them do profitable business but also save our environment.

For them, a good company is one that helps us protect the environment or preserve the resources.

For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods—all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science—and act before it’s too late. Barack Obama (44th U.S. President)

So if you are starting a business, consider its environmental impact. A great business idea is one that considers its environmental impact.

For a business owner, making money sustain-ably can get you some unique advantages in the long run. Environmental protection is going to be a necessity in the near future.

Here are some unique business ideas from all over the world

Unique Online Business Ideas:

1. application of residual heat from servers for better living.

Computing power is increasing, so does its energy consumption. What we do not notice is that a lot of energy is wasted in the form of heat. This heat could be used in other applications.

Nerdalize is one such company. They are building a different and better cloud computing infrastructure.

Instead of putting thousands of servers into a datacenter, Nerdalize is distributing them to homes.

Homeowners can lease the two-in-one heater/server from Nerdalize, who cover the electricity costs of the device.

The homeowners in the west (Particularly with colder climate) make good use of the residual heat coming from servers to heat up their homes and shower water in summers.

This helps the company in multiple ways:

• Help them save money, which they would have to spend on buying expensive office space.
• Enabling them to scale up their computation capability around the world rapidly.
• No need of cooling infrastructure to cool down the server rooms.

Take Away: Can you Identify an emerging business opportunity where you can help the environment. It will be a great story to share and win new customers for your business.

Related Articles: How to generate New Business Ideas Learn how to evaluate your Idea Great tips on how to develop business ideas Learn how to protect your business idea How to select a name for your business idea Finally – Promoting your Business Idea (how to)

Unique Food Business Ideas

2 discovering green eating solutions online.

Greenease is a hyperlocal app that enables you to identify restaurants that source its ingredients sustainably.

This app supports restaurants that offer the product as below:

• Free-range/pasture
• Gluten-free
• Locally Sourced
• Sustainable
• Veg-Friendly

The need of this App arises as a lot of people who need natural or allergen-free foods are not able to locate restaurants offering meals as per their requirement. At the same times, restaurants with such offerings are not able to get customers willing to pay for it.

Take Away: People around the globe are waking up to healthy eating habits. Can you identify any unique trend and convert that to an exceptional food business idea. If yes, you create a niche for yourself.

3 Alternative Flour for Diabetes Management

Diabetes is a rising problem worldover and more so in India. This is where a company came up with idea of jackfruit flour.

Jackfruit helps improve your health in general, beat diabetes and aids in weight loss. This business Jackfruit365 is an attempt in bringing to every household a natural, green and clean packet of health.

Unique Business Ideas in Urban Transportation

4 bikes on rent on an hourly basis to ease traffic.

Cities are growing and with that is growing the issue of traffic and pollution. Urban transportation infrastructure is not able to keep pace with this growth in development. This is where a startup called Metro Bikes comes in picture.

A user can take a two wheeler on rent starting an hourly basis from Point A to point A. In future the company is going to provide two wheelers to go from point A to Point B. This is an idea that has potential to ease the traffic in cities and motivate people to leave their vehicles ta home. Needless to say this will help reduce pollution.

Unique Service Business Ideas

5 ubitricity: mobile electric vehicle charging stations.

With increasing interest in electric vehicles, one question everyone has in their mind is the ability to charge their cars while driving. Another problem associated with it is billing for the electricity while charging vehicles away from homes.

While everyone is struggling with the two questions, Ubitricity has a mobile electric charging and billing system in place.

Ubitricity has a patented, intelligent charging and billing solution in place. Ubitricity has freed the electricity meter from its stationary cellar and made it mobile. Today, you can find the mobile, calibrated electricity meter in the SmartCable instead of the fixed charging pole.

The advantages of this new approach are visible in every ubitricity solution. The charging points themselves are made cheaper and tricky invoicing situations can be solved for the first time to satisfy all parties involved.

What’s next?

In the future, this technology will make an essential contribution to transforming electric vehicles into distributed electricity storage for the smart grid. Below are the features of this unique service business idea:

• mobile charging system: Charge and bill easier, cheaper, quicker
• The SmartCable: Charge, wherever and whenever you want. Always an appropriate solution. The SimpleSocket:
• Charge and bill comfortably with mobile electricity meter and mobile electricity contract.
• The ConnectivityManager: Transparent billing, many possibilities – and a good overview. Exact billing and security.

Unique Business Ideas in Sustainable Energy

6 lucidenergy: converting gravitational energy into electricity.

Do you know that an untapped source of clean energy is flowing 24/7 beneath cities and towns around the world? What is that power? It is an excess pressure in gravity-fed municipal water pipelines.

LucidEnergy is the company with unique Business ideas that could harness some of that excess pressure to generate environmentally-friendly hydropower without disrupting water delivery.

Here is how LucidPipe Power System works :

• Water Origin & Pressure: Water from snow and rainfall fills remote reservoirs, feeding pipelines that move water to the point-of-use. As the water flows downhill, gravity creates pressure in the pipeline that is typically relieved by pressure-reducing valves.
• LucidPipe Power System: The LPS can be placed in-line in the pipes of a water transmission network, and can generate electricity from excess pressure in the pipeline, reducing the work done by pressure-reducing valves.
• Distribution: The point-of-use for the water is the customers of the water utility. The LucidPipe Power System is “invisible,” that is; it does not affect water delivery.

7 Enessere: Smart Wind Turbines for Family Homes

Enessere is a clean Energy Company that offers solutions for complete energy independence. The ENESSERE Hercules wind turbines are intelligent energy generators as it learns local wind patterns and predicts optimum working periods.

8 Biodiesel: Environment Friendly Fuel Alternative

Biodiesel is an environmental friendly fossil fuel alternative. This is produced from recycled cooking oil, ( # ) soybean oil, and animal fats.

Eco Green Fuels is the first company in India with an end to end solution for Biodiesel.

Biodiesel maintains the standard of engine static and reduces carbon emission by more than half. Unlike other parts in the world where Biodiesel is produced from edible seeds, in India it is produced from non-edible oil seeds such as Pongamia, and Jatropha.

Unique Business Ideas in Environmental protection

9 agastya buoyant: unique river or lake solid waste removal system.

Rivers in India are flooded with solid waste and pollutants. As civilisation in India started to establish around cities, this is one of the biggested tragedies of development.

Government of India is running several projects to clean up the rivers and water bodies to ensure safety of its citizens.

Namami Gange Programme , is one such initiative of the Government to clean River Ganga. It is an Integrated river conservation mission, with budget outlay of US$ 3 Billion to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution, conservation and rejuvenation of National River Ganga.

A comapny that is helping government in this initiative is Agastya Buoyant . This company has created ariver surface andsolid waste removal system called “ Trash Boom “. Trash boom collects floating trash ranging from plastic material to different types of organic and inorganic particles that pollutes the water.

10 Brics Bio: Unique Business Idea in Sustainable Agriculture & Household Cleaning

Brics Bio is an amazing business. This company has built sustainable and safer technologies using bio-based innovations for agriculture and household care.

The comapny provides functional and safe food production products through solid principles of natural farming like organic/biological farming, community farming, urban farming, etc.

Apart from the above what really excited me was their household care products such as Hydropod Gel for plants, handwash and fabric, floor & utensil cleaner.

11 Biodegradable Packaging Solutions

Plastic bags are ubiquitous today. At the same time the challenge it creates for our environment has become one of the biggest issue for mankind.

This is where an Indian startup EnviGreen Biotech comes in picture. This startup has created a bag that looks like plastic, but it not that.

The bag created by them is made with natural starch and vegetable derivatives. Needless to say it is completely biodegradable.This bag begin to dissipate in warm water.

These bags are 100% organic, recyclable – and even edible for animals.

There is a huge demand for bioplastic packaging at 8,84,000 tons by 2020. ( 1 )

Unique Business Ideas in Water

12 water from atmospheric air: anywhere, anytime.

Potable water availability is consistently going down across the world. It is estimated that only 60% of water will be fit for human consumption by 2030.

What it simply means is that, India and rest of the world is staring at a global water crisis.

This is where Akvo and Electrowater Technologies comes in picture.( # )

These two companies have developed a technology to condense humidity from air, just like the rain. Their technology replicates the natural process of condensation by simulating the dew point, which allows it to make clean drinking water continuously.

13 Profitable Fish Farms in unproductive, waterlogged land

Agratam is converting unproductive, waterlogged land into profitable fish farms in Bihar.( # ) Bihar has 70,000 hectares of embanked water bodies (ponds, tanks, etc.) and 300,000 hectares of water logged area.( # )

Agratam India is working very closely with fishermen & fisherwomen to improve their livelihood and to create the infrastructure needed to bring about a Blue Revolution in Bihar by:

• facilitating financial assistance for the entire value chain (for individual fish farming, to create new ponds, to renovate old ponds, to set up hatcheries and to set up fish feed mills)
• facilitating insurance cover for fish (crop insurance) and fishermen/fisherwomen (life insurance, health insurance, etc.)
• providing training in modern techniques of fish farming

World Needs much more such Unique Business Ideas

These unique business ideas have the potential to change the world. These business ideas not only offers financial independence to the entrepreneurs but also to its users and society at large. If you can think of any such unique business ideas or draw inspiration from, you can create a niche for yourself.

15+ Innovative Business Ideas

Several businesses surround us, and people are finding ways to remove inefficiency in the system with startups such as Ola and OYO. Smart usage of technology drives most of these ideas.

Therefore, many of us believe that there are no real innovative business ideas out there. However, when it comes to innovative business ideas, we are talking about business ideas that meet:

• New requirements
• Un-articulated needs
• Existing unaddressed market needs.

These business ideas come to life with efficient products, processes, services, technologies, or business models. Therefore, these innovative business ideas make users, markets, governments and society much more efficient.

Here are some Innovative Business Ideas for you to consider:

Innovative online business ideas, 1 helping job seekers choose the right place to work.

Employees today live in a world where they play many roles. They have much higher expectations from their life. Therefore they want to find employers where they can fit in well and meet objectives of their life.

Job seekers look for information on work-life balance, workplace culture, employee satisfaction, and the financial health of a company.

However, until recently there was no one-stop shop for filtering job searches through this lens.

This is what you get on CareerLabs. CareerLabs uses machine learning and aggregates data from a wide variety of sources, including Freedom of Information Act requests, independent surveys, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

CareerLabs offers a basic version of the site for free, but if you want to learn which companies sponsor the most work visas or a business’s political alignment, you’ll have to pay.

Take Away: If you can identify an opportunity to enable people to find information about anything that is difficult to attain, you can create a good business.

Innovative Business Idea in personal Care

2 autoblow 2: personal pleasure machine for men.

AutoBlow 2 is a powerful realistic electronic pleasure machine for men. This is a sex toy for men that has set a new standard in realistic solo experiences.

This innovative business ideas was was successfully crowdfunded on Indiegogo, and makes millions of dollars a year through the sales of blowjob machines.

Your key Take away: The key factor in the success of any business is your willingness to do whatever it takes to grow the business, and not caring what other people think of it. If you can dare yourself you will be truly successful with any even crazier business idea.

Innovative Travel & Tourism Business Ideas

3 getting to know amsterdam from the locals with yello backie.

I am not sure if I can call it a big or small business ideas, but this is undoubtedly an Innovative business idea.

Yellow Backie allows a tourist to know about Amsterdam from the locals. It is an initiative to spark some love between Amsterdam locals and its visitors with a famous Dutch custom: riding on the luggage rack of a friend’s bike.

Yellow Backie is a unique possibility for visitors to experience Amsterdam through the eyes of an Amsterdammer, and for Amsterdammers to meet new people from around the globe. It’s a bit like Couchsurfing, on a bike, without the smelly socks in your living room.

Getting a Backie-ride is very easy; you don’t even need an app for it. When you visit Amsterdam, just look for people riding bikes with a bright yellow luggage rack. Spot one? Shout “Backie!” as loud as possible, hop on, and see where your new guide takes you.

Unlike most things in life, becoming a Backie-driver is free! So, id you live in Amsterdam and own a bike? You can send a message with a short motivation, and the company will give you a yellow luggage rack for free.

Take Away: Can you think of a business idea where you can seek support from locals. If yes, you can use it to build a profitable and sustainable business idea.

4 NeverEnuf: Kids Fun place with Trains

My son is in love with trains and he owns everything from Thomas & friends to Lego trains. All put together he has more then 200 engines and may be 1000 tarin cars.

I am sure sevral other kids love trains. However having trains at home is one thing but seeing them in natural settings is another. As seeing trains in natural settings inspire kids to explore more about it. This is where NeverEnuf come in picture. NeverEnuf is a Garden Railroad running “scale model-trains” in a magical, miniature world.

Your Takeaway: Experience is a business ideas that is never going to lose its appeal. If you have any such ideas go ahead and execute it, you will find many takers.

New Innovative Business Ideas in India in Agriculture

5 artificial intelligence in agriculture.

Small farmers around the world follow traditional farming practices due to lack of access to scientific understanding of crop lifecycle, pests, quality metrics and the latest micro-fertilisers.

Intello Labs , image-based solutions can provide insights on the crops’ health during the growing season and its final harvested quality by the click of a photograph.

The advanced image recognition technology can recognise objects, faces, flora fauna and tag them in any image. This technique uses high-performance deep learning algorithms.

6 Web based warehousing system for Crop that help farmers triple their yield

A group of young people passionate about agriculture and food sustainability created Kitovu .

Kitovu created a web based input warehousing system that can collect, analyze and aggregate soil and geolocation data to match the right soil types and fertilizers for every crop. (#)

Kitovu also provides a marketplace for farm produce so as to increase crop yields by reducing post-harvest losses. Ten years from now, it wouldn’t matter if you are a farmer, a processor, or input manufacturer; if you require high quality inputs and produce that is traceable in Sub-Saharan Africa, you would just have to Kitovu it!

Innovative Business Ideas in Healthcare

7 infant incubator cum warmer for upcountry places without any electricity.

Each year, more than 1 million babies die on their birthday. 98% of these deaths occur in the developing world. The leading cause of these deaths is preventable and treatable complications related to prematurity and low birth weight, including hypothermia.

This is where San Francisco-based nonprofit Embrace Global has an innovative business idea. Embrace introduced a US$25 baby warmer in 2010. It is a sleeping bag that serves as a backcountry incubator and doesn’t need electricity.

The bag contains a heating element. This heating element can be removed and heated in the boiling water again.

Take Away: Healthcare sector offers many opportunities for innovative business ideas. So what is stopping you, if you are passionate about healthcare, you certainly have many such opportunities.

8 Healthcare at Home

It is believed that a patinet get the best care at home and recovers faster. However, getting treatment is not always possible as with the advancement of technology there are advanced equipments that can not be brought to home. This is where Portea comes in. Portea provides affordable care at home with its medical services.

9 Hand Wash for Kids

Children play all day with all sorts of things. While they play with bare hands, they hate washing them leading to several infections. Diarrheoa is one leading cause of child mortality in several countries including India. ( 2 , 3 )

This is where a playful business ideas, SoaPen comes in picture. SoaPen is devised to act as a better alternative to a bar/liquid soap or hand sanitiser for children. Compact in size and efficient by design, this roll-on handwash acts as a teaching tool that encourages cleanliness in daily life.

SoaPen’s markable soap is a subtle yet instructive way of cultivating the habit if hand washing among children

Available in green, orange and blue, SoaPen is made with food-grade colors and, unlike hand sanitisers, is not harsh on the skin. Clubbed with an intuitive gradient that helps keep track of the use, a 10 ml bottle gives up to 60 washes in Rs 40.

10 Biodegradable Sanitary Pads for Women

Sanitary pads are a basic necessity for women. However, most of them complain of irritation while using regular sanitary pads that are made from Most pads are plastic (90% content) and chlorine-bleached wood pulp. This is where an innovative business ideas has been becoming popular among women. ( 4 )

Saathi pads are biodegradable and made from banana fibre. It does not contain gels, chemicals or synthetic fibres to prevent itching and rashes. These pads are bio-degradable and degrade within 6 months- 1200x faster than plastic pads!

Innovative Business Ideas in Cleaning

11 low-water washing machine.

Water is a scarce resource. Availability of clean water is a big issue in many parts of the world.

Washing laundry is a significant use of water in the average home; accounting for 15% to 40% of the overall water consumption inside the typical household of four persons.

Needless to say, this could be an area where significant saving in water consumption could occur.

Therefore Xeros came up with a washing machine that uses 90 percent less water. This UK based startups groundbreaking washer relies on nylon polymer beads to remove stains from slightly damp clothes, instead of using agitation and large quantities of H2O.

At the core of the Xeros washing machine are the revolutionary little polymer laundry beads that make everything about this system possible.

These tiny, spheroidal plastic chips can absorb stains, stray dye, and soil, carrying them away from fabrics, resulting in a superior cleaning process that uses less water and chemicals than traditional commercial washing machines ever could.

With these laundry beads, the Xeros machine washes fabrics at lower temperatures, conserving energy. By combining lower wash temperatures with the beads’ ability to absorb stray colours, you can minimise the risk of colour being re-deposited in your wash.

This means that you spend less time sorting colours. For laundries that process large volumes each day, this makes the washing process more streamlined, reducing labour and improving productivity.

Innovative Food Business Ideas

12 ayurveda and yoga inspired food products.

Sattvik food is supposed to be light, nutritious, easy to digest and always freshly prepared.

The foods chosen for this diet bring clarity and balance both internally in the body as well as externally in the universe. A wholesome meal that doesn’t leave you feeling drowsy for hours later.

This what Sattviko promises its consumers.

13 Fresh Fruits & Vegetables for Businesses from farm

Middleman controls the vegetable and fruits value chain in India. These middlemen also walk away with huge margins at the expense of farmers. As per estimates, a farmer gets only one-fourth of what the consumer pays.

Ninjacart is trying to solve this problem by bridging the gaps so that the farmer gets a good value for his produce and the stores get high quality goods at competitive prices. This Innovative startup has been helping hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and kirana stores source fresh fruits & vegetables, staples and FMCG goods directly from farmers and brands.

14 Y-Cook: Precooked Food without any refrigeration or preservatives

Well, I must say I do not know how they do it. But it is an exciting food business idea. Y-Cook , a food Technology Company has introduced minimally processed vegetables, lentils and fruits. Their products retain its natural freshness, colour, texture, flavour and nutrients for 12 months without any preservatives or additives or even refrigeration.

15 Leverage Love of Coffee

If you are a connoisseur of coffee and also love cold coffee, then Sleepy owl is your ultimate destination. Their freshly roasted specialty coffee is slowly brewed with cold water over 22 hours. This extracts all the goodness of coffee and leaves leaves behind the bitterness of traditional hot brewed coffee.

16 Grow your vegetables in your Living Room

If you are like me, you must be worried about the news of excessive usage of pesticide in farm produce. If you have ever thought of living in a farm to give your kids the best fresh vegetables, then Altifarm is for you.

Ergonomically-designed, Altifarm comes across as a one-stop solution for all constraints related to urban farming. Consisting of 3 or 4 tiers (depending on your preference), Altifarm provides 1sqm of space to farm while utilising only as much of footprint as a chair does. ( 5 )

The shelves are height-adjustable, giving you the freedom to choose a variety of saplings. The farm is designed with a wall hugging rear and is fitted with wheels to provide mobility.

Innovative Business Ideas in Education

17 online education.

You must have come across several platforms selling online courses such as Lynda , Unacademy and several others. However, there is one that really stands out. This platform is Khan Academy .

Khan Academy is an innovative business idea as it offers FREE practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard.

Their platform empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom.

Khan Academy offers education in math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more. This platform has partnered with several prominent institutions from United States such as NASA, The Museum of Modern Art, The California Academy of Sciences, and MIT to offer specialized content.

Innovative Business Ideas Supporting Small Businesses

18 peer to peer lending marketplace.

India is shifting towards digital payments and that has helped FAIRCENT a lot to grow its fortunes in recent years. The company that started its operation in 2014 is an innovative marketplace for peer to peer lending.

It provides a transparent, technology-driven platform for borrowers and lenders where they interact with each other and decide upon mutually agreeable rate for their transactions. The platform helps customers get cheaper loans after verifying their creditworthiness. It also benefits lenders to earn best possible returns on their investment.

Take Away: If financial space is something that gets you going and you have got enough skills to test the waters, this is your best bet to earn money online.

19 One stop Restaurant Management Tool: Toast

With increase in working / travelling population restaurants are becoming omnipresent all over the world. All these restaurants need several technology interventions to operate efficiently. While large restaurants have resources to build their own system or integrate with large point-of-sale providers, small restaurants often lack there.

This is where Toast  comes in picture. Toast offers a point of sale system designed for restaurants. It is built on a cloud-based platform.

Innovative Business Ideas that are revolutionizing cities

19. getmyparking: end of parking woes.

Parking for automobiles is one the single biggest challenge cities are facing today. It is estimated that 30% of road congestion and pollution is caused by vehicles looking for parking. ( # )

This is where GetMyParking emerges and looking at ways to resolve the urban parking problem.

Your TakeAway: Can you identify a business idea that resolves the problems of rapid urbanisation. If yes, it could be something that may really work.

20 LinCodes: A Digital Address that is better than GPS

Our cities are spreading rapidly and with the spread emerging areas no one has heard about. That is why GPS is considered to be a blessings by most of us. It takes us straight to the destination we want to go, most of the times.

However, at times GPS take you straight to a place, which is the end of the road.

Now move beyond Pin codes and even coordinates as you have LinCodes. LinCodes are available from a mobile app with Google Maps as the foundation. LinCodes stands for “Location Index Number” and it is a unique 12-digit digital address.

These digital addresses have been generated by the startup by dividing the entire geographical expanse of the country into a grid of 10×10 ft squares and these segmented areas have then been given a unique numerical code as an address. ( # )

Summary: Innovative Business Ideas

While everyone understands that very few startups become a big business. But remember everything starts small. I am quite sure that some of the above mentioned unique and innovative business ideas will grow into billion-dollar companies. So stay tuned for more such ideas in the next update of this blog post.

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What are some tips for creating an innovative business plan PowerPoint presentation?

June 24, 2024 /

To create an innovative business plan PowerPoint presentation, consider the following tips:

• Start with a clear and concise outline that highlights the key points of your business plan.
• Use visually appealing and professional templates to enhance the overall design of your presentation.
• Incorporate relevant and engaging visuals, such as charts, graphs, and images, to support your key messages.
• Keep the text on each slide minimal and use bullet points or short phrases to convey information effectively.
• Use a consistent color scheme and font style throughout the presentation to maintain a cohesive and professional look.
• Practice your presentation to ensure a smooth flow and confident delivery.

By following these tips, you can create an innovative business plan PowerPoint presentation that effectively communicates your ideas and captivates your audience.

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New Teladoc CEO Targets Health Plan, International Growth for BetterHelp

The new CEO of Teladoc Health Inc. wants to secure insurance-company coverage for the company’s BetterHelp direct-to-consumer behavioral health services as part of his plan to improve profitability.

Speaking to analysts after the virtual care provider’s second-quarter earnings report, Chuck Divita also said he’s looking to build on the international expansion efforts of BetterHelp by targeting a handful of non-English-speaking markets in addition to the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The broader goal is to more tightly weave BetterHelp, which accounts for about 40 percent of Teladoc’s top line, together with the rest of the company.

“You’ve got a consumer business that has resonated well and we have need for engagement in our B2B business,” Divita, who took over in June , said on a July 31 conference call. “We have a scaled B2B business that can benefit from other parts of the organization as well. So, what I’m looking for is each individual business to meet the market needs and realize its own potential, but as part of the broader company, where are those opportunities to unlock new value and differentiate.”

Divita and his team have work to do when it comes to BetterHelp finances: The unit’s revenues slipped 9 percent in the second quarter versus the same time in 2023 and its adjusted EBITDA fell by more than a quarter to $25.5 million. The company’s broad Integrated Care group—which has grown its total membership by more than six million people over the past year to 92.4 million—grew 5 percent in the quarter and posted adjusted EBITDA of $64.0 million, a 69 percent jump from Q2 of last year.

As a whole, New York-based Teladoc reported a second-quarter net loss of $838 million, which primarily due to a $790 million impairment charge the company booked because of the slide in the company’s shares—they’re down more than 70 percent in two years—as well as lower projected cash flows at BetterHelp. Total adjusted EBITDA came in at $89.5 million , up from $72.2 million in the same period of last year, while revenue slipped 2 percent to $642 million.

One of the main struggles at BetterHelp of late has been the rising cost of acquiring customers , which the business does primarily through social media advertising. That dynamic and Teladoc’s need to watch its marketing spending have combined to slow the addition of new customers and led Divita and Mala Murthy to suspend guidance for the business. On the conference call, CFO Mala Murthy said limited visibility about ad spending and an overall weaker macro environment created a “range of outcomes […] just too large for us to provide guidance.”

The marketing spending issues also play into Teladoc leaders’ plan to push BetterHelp into the insurance plan space, where Teladoc has established relationships.

“We have talked about our client retention rate being over 90 percent,” Murthy said. “This is an opportunity for us to actually use that […] in a smart efficient way with the BetterHelp product.”

Shares of Teladoc (Ticker: TDOC ) were changing hands around $8.85 in midday trading Aug. 1, down 6 percent from their previous close before Divita and his team reported results. Over the past six months, they have given up more than half of their value, a slide that has cut Teladoc’s market capitalization to about $1.5 billion.

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