Getting innovation advice from a specialist agency

Many companies do not really know how to go about introducing new practices. This is where various specialised agencies come in, offering innovation consulting services. If you are wondering how such an agency can help you, you have come to the right place. We would like to take a look at how specialists in innovation and project strategies can help you in the development of your company.

What can you expect from innovation consultants?

Before we look at what a specialist innovation agency can do for you, let’s first look at what you can expect from them and what is at stake for a company in implementing new practices.

In a rapidly changing economic context, faced with a competitive market, companies have no choice but to innovate. In this sense, innovation consulting can be understood as a variant of business management consulting. But also to adopt more creative and productive approaches. Specialists in innovative processes help the company’s employees to enter into a new dynamic. They drive change, which can be radical, but also gradual.

The aim is to enable teams to become more productive through a constant flow of new ideas. The innovation consultant ensures that these ideas are correctly channelled, fit into an overall project and effectively meet a relevant, clearly identified need. Within the framework of an innovation process, the specialists also ensure that a high success rate is achieved, characterised by increased competitiveness of the company in its sector and in the face of competition.

Innovation consultancies offer the following services, for example

• support for innovation projects
• strengthening of innovation capacity
• development of innovation processes
• developing the skills needed for innovation.

What do innovation consulting services bring to the company?

We have seen that innovation consulting can be understood as a particular form of management consulting. But the latter is based on a more traditional approach and often uses standardised models. In contrast, innovation consulting aims to bring out new and unique concepts. In other words, it encourages creativity, while channelling it, framing it, so that it meets the requirements of the market and the company’s objectives.

Compared to traditional support, innovation consulting by a specialised agency has a number of advantages, which can be decisive in a competitive market. The aim of the specialist(s) who accompany your teams is to enable you to make the difference with respect to the other players in the market. In this context, innovation consists of approaching tasks in a different way, in order to be more efficient and more creative.

The innovation consultancy helps you to develop technologies, products, services or business models that create a real competitive advantage. It is no longer a question of being a little cheaper than the other players. It is simply not enough.

Innovation consultants support managers in motivating employees, who benefit from the positive image of the company resulting from the fundamental dynamic of constant improvement. Moreover, innovation leads to higher margins and profits. Customers are more attracted to new, inspiring products or services that meet their expectations.

How to implement innovation consulting?

There is no single recipe for implementing an innovation strategy within a company. That is why specialised agencies generally prefer to offer a tailor-made solution that will suit the teams. There is nothing worse than management trying to impose new approaches when people are not ready.

Change always creates a sense of instability, which some employees do not appreciate. Specialists from innovation consultancies will be helpful to management and managers if they do not know how to motivate their teams. The aim is not to impose, but to federate, even inspire, by driving change and a strategy of constant improvement. It is deployed by relying on human resources and on the creative potential of employees.

In practice

In innovation consulting, the focus is on increasing the capacity to innovate within teams. All employees have a certain amount of professional experience that needs to be developed. This is why agencies will usually offer you a multi-phase approach. The first phase consists of building a solid foundation by establishing mutual trust between the company’s management or managers and the team of consultants. This step can take the form of an audit.

The specialists of your innovation consulting agency will take over the management of the process. They assume that your company is unique and needs tailor-made support. Thus, an innovation project cannot be free of the particularities of the company to which it applies. It builds on the innovation capacities, habits and practices in place to create the first successes.

Innovation must emerge on its own. Therefore, the specialist in charge of the process is primarily responsible for empowering the company and its employees to innovate continuously, motivated by success. He or she also ensures that this spirit of innovation does not die out once the first project is completed. The aim is not to implement a one-off innovation, but to create a dynamic and maintain it over time. The best solution is to transfer skills by creating innovation facilitators within the teams.