How Do OKRs Help In Company Innovation?

Business sustainability depends on many factors, but a company’s interest in innovating is the most significant. The idea of introducing creativity into business and ensuring excellent results (in the end) is a reasonable one. Many employers have taken advantage of this by building a stable, innovative work culture to facilitate growth. However, for businesses yet to consider company innovation with the help of OKRs, get more insight in this article. 

What Is the Growing Importance Of Innovation?

Innovations in businesses are classified into two major types – productive/sustainable and disruptive. They play a huge role in a company’s success, which is why innovation is important. 

Below are some major growing benefits of company innovation–

1. It gives a company a chance to solve major business problems (internal and external) using various resources, such as internet data, research works, software, and tools. 
2. Developing innovative ideas help improve productivity as employees become more interested in the execution of processes, strategies, and models. This increased efficiency of team members facilitates a brand’s growth and development. 
3. Innovation puts a company in a competitive spot. Several businesses could offer the same service as a brand; however, developing innovative ideas will help them earn a place. The reason is that as similar as these services seem, companies get a chance to compete with their most viable product (MVP) or service.
4. Another importance of company innovation is its influence on market share and revenue. Developing ideas for a business project will have an employer finding cheaper but effective alternatives, thus reducing cost and increasing market share and revenue. It is another competitive advantage other companies may struggle with maintaining budget and market share using familiar strategies.
5. Innovation offers a level of uniqueness to business processes. It ensures that brands won’t have to follow common approaches; instead, they would welcome new ideas by recruiting creative talents or individuals ready to think outside the box. 

How Do OKRs Help In Company Innovation?

Graduating from innovative ideas to OKRs is a balanced framework. OKR is a methodology that aligns a company’s strategic goals with possible outcomes. It is a framework most company employers, team leaders, and managers now use to inspire members and drive innovation within a company. 

Below are a series of ways OKRs help in company innovation. 

• Ensures Team Alignment

One of the things OKR does is to ensure team alignment. It is almost impossible for innovation to exist without proper alignment of the teams present within a company’s framework. These teams contribute largely to achieving the goals of an organization, and with each team offering ideas, they can collaboratively work together. It is somewhat of a strategic approach to ensure a company’s progress. 

• Gives Complete Autonomy 

Generally, employees feel like they aren’t in total control, especially as team leaders or employers supervise them. However, to drive innovation, OKRs give employees full autonomy. They become conscious of their impact on the organization and develop personal strategies for commitment. They will also be able to measure their performance and engagement personally and how they can develop innovative ideas for success during the next general team meeting. 

• Clear Focus on Company’s Goals 

OKRs give a better perspective which is another yardstick for innovation to exist in a company. Understanding a company’s SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound) goals using OKRs will help create a feasible roadmap. And with this roadmap, teams can work hand-in-hand to develop ideas to reach goals within the allotted time frames. More so, team leaders and members will be able to measure progress successfully to determine if they are in the right direction.  

Examples Of How OKRs Help In Innovation

In company innovation, here is how OKR works: 

Objective – What the company intends to happen. 

Key Result 1 – What eventually happens and is measurable. 

Key Result 2 – A supporting event that happens and is measurable. 

Here are two examples.

Example 1:

Objective – An internet company driving innovation by launching a 5G service. 

Key Result 1 – Get 10,000 subscribers to the 5G Service in 3 months. 

Key Result 2 – Generate 15 to 25% revenue higher than the previous (4G) service. 

Example 2: 

Objective – A software development team driving innovation through a unique product feature.

Key Result 1 – Positive feedback from end users on how the feature has helped solve problems. 

Key Result 2 – Negative feedback from end users to determine how to improve the feature or discard it. 

Conclusion

OKRs help in company innovation and one way to monitor or track that progress is by using Huminos software. It is a free tool designed to help companies stay focused on their goals by facilitating an innovative culture through team alignment and performance measurement. Huminos works on these principles and aims to help large- and small-scale businesses thrive excellently in a competitive space.