Standardise, Modernise, Innovate: The secret to smart investments

Innovation is the key to business success, though incorporating innovation is often easier said than done. Technologies evolve and emerge at an increasingly fast pace, with new developments such as generative AI often encouraging leaders to completely reorganise entire industries. 

When emerging technologies do upend the status quo, they bring competing businesses back to the starting line. The difference between businesses that use this disruption to accelerate and those that are left behind is not just about embracing change, but investing in it cleverly. 

Research from EY found that 59% of employees said senior leaders at their companies were slow to embrace emerging technologies, with 48% of frontline workers saying these technologies had become outdated by the time they were fully implemented.

When done correctly, though, smart investments engage businesses at every level, igniting a curiosity and a drive that greets disruption and immediately puts it to work in service of growth. In order to achieve this, businesses must standardise, modernise and innovate.

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A major issue with the way many organisations invest in innovation is that they do so within siloed teams. Innovation is looked at as the silver bullet, the injection of capital that will overhaul a specific process and enable rapid growth. 

While this kind of direct investment can be beneficial, it is not always effective. In this scenario, businesses identify sections of their operations in need of change and invest directly in an emerging technology to address this. 

It relies on that technology being a good fit, aligning with the aims and ecosystem at that organisation. At the pace at which new technologies emerge, seamlessly identifying smart investments in this way is not necessarily achievable.

The key to avoiding this is standardising: removing silos within an organisation, breaking down the barriers and fostering collaboration. Innovation is fundamentally a change and requires the space to be accepted by a business. 

Prepare your business to accept change by ensuring there is standardised communication across sectors, setting a baseline of fundamental values and goals that are commonly worked towards. Encourage collaboration across teams and foster a belief in a united, one-team approach.  

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Key to encouraging growth within an organisation is fostering an enthusiasm for change at a granular level. This starts at the top, with leadership that has a clear vision of the direction in which the company is being guided. This means setting out targets, identifying areas where change is needed and opportunities for growth. 

The easiest way to help change filter through an organisation is by creating an innovation space within the workplace, where individuals can buy in and give feedback on the technology they want to use on a daily basis. This is the model for Optus’ FutureNow space, where enterprises and governments can interact with 5G technology and understand the emerging technologies roadmap. 

These co-creative innovation sessions are designed to combine blue-sky thinking with a pragmatic approach to help you design the bespoke future solutions your business needs to thrive.

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Becoming acquainted with emerging technologies in a low-risk setting is the most helpful way to incorporate them into a business.  By choosing to invest in new technologies and breaking down them down into smaller projects, leaders can organically implement them in ways that integrate easily to the company’s existing operations.

Having created a pathway for open collaboration within the organisation and an appetite for innovation, new technologies are able to be interacted with in a less prescriptive manner. 

By breaking up investments into new technology and letting them filter broadly throughout an organisation, emerging technologies can play both roles, streamlining operations and providing new areas of expansion. 

Conducting this process of standardisation, modernisation and innovation can be complex, but it is a far more impactful investment than any new technology. Understanding your organisation and clearing a path through it for innovation is the most effective way to ensure future investments bring change that is productive, not just disruptive.  

To continue this conversation further, please reach out to your Optus Account Manager or request a call back below.