With the resultant economic downturn around the world, companies should exploit their under-utilised human capital to prototype new products, services and business processes.Change challenges your company’s business practices, orthodoxies and the status quo. Executives should take a step back and re-assess their strategies and question how their organisation can better serve the market in the most cost effective way. If your company is suffering through a slow period, and have excess capacity, then this is a perfect opportunity to experiment and beta trial new products, services and business methods in your organisation.

Meet with your customers. Discuss their problems. Look for opportunities to remove their pain points. Can you save them time and money? Invite them to work with you on a solution. As an example, we are currently conducting a small scale trial of a prototype pedometer teaching aid at a local primary school that helps educators teach children about the importance of physical activity. This helps teachers who are time-poor to create new and inspirational classroom activities for their students.

Mobilise your team into groups of 3-4 and brainstorm new areas that the business to explore. It is not enough just to have ideas; you need to empower them with resources (ie. money and time) to conduct small scale beta trials. A scenario: your team has an idea for an intranet software package that integrates data from different departments and brings up an information dashboard to allow quick and timely decisions. Connect your engineers, business analysts and relevant stakeholders together to get a quick prototype done, evaluate the results and decide how to proceed. Having the ability to experiment and actually implement prototypes of ideas will give your company the competitive edge when the economy turns around.

Let the ideas flow from the bottom-up. Assuming you have adequate rewards and recognition based on personal and departmental Key Performance Indicators, the ideas and prototypes that flow from your team will have a better chance of success than ones forced down from above. Provide the leadership, parameters and boundaries of the solution and watch the magic happen!

While investing in new products and services may seem risky in the present climate, it is far better to start innovating now and be in a strong position when the economy (eventually) starts growing again.

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