As art directors and designers we are constantly giving feedback on the design, the overall idea, and just how successful new business ventures might be. However, when is the last time you critiqued your business and its structure? Lets face it, every day you encounter several frustrating processes or to-do list items that you dread completing. Streamlining these necessary evils can help take your business to the next level. Now is the time to pay attention to those details and how you can innovate. Below are a couple ideas to get started.

Paper Audit - How much paper passes through your office each day? Have you taken a look at how much you throw away versus how much you recycle? What creates the most paper in your company? Maybe it’s time to convert those fax invoices to a .pdf email solution.

Software Audit - Take time once a month to check out newly released software. Is there a new online meeting system you can be using? Or a great FTP software that works much better and saves passwords? Even though it’s hard to keep up with software innovation, make time to assess your process and how software can help. Don’t forget your design/creative software either!

MOJO Meetings™ - As often as possible, get your team together and meet about how to innovate your processes. One of the easiest ways to innovate is encouraging ideas. A group talk about new ways to do those annoying tasks and ways to be more efficient will lead to a leaner and meaner business.

Failure - The best way to learn is by failing, right? If you are consistently trying new ideas, some are bound to fail. Learning and innovating from these failures propels your business into greater efficiency over time.

If you spend time auditing, assessing, challenging, and asking questions about your business, ideas will emerge. Whether business is booming or is rather slow, this always seems to take the back seat. You have to schedule time to meet about innovating and generating ideas for your and your clients. Empowering yourself and your team to generate ideas is crucial. And remember, it is okay to fail.

Innovation Inspiration Links:

Business Innovation Factory

The Genius Machine

Disruptive By Design

TED

Keeping up with design can be hard because its continuing evolution can quickly pass right by us. Ten years ago, Rule29 was not designing web sites regularly, nor did we know what social media was. In fact, we were just getting the hang of Adobe Photoshop 4.0 and Mac OS 9. Today, we are well versed in web design and constantly experimenting with social media even though we never saw that coming. Our industry evolves rapidly, and if you blink too long it’s easy to miss interesting innovations, trends and changes. As a sober designer in our or any other industry, it is important to keep up on the latest and greatest so your business can innovate and grow along with it. Here are a couple of ideas that may help you stay on top of things:

1 - Put Employees In Charge

Most designers, and I am sure this is true in other professions, really love certain aspects of their job. For example, if someone on your team really enjoys learning the latest software features in Adobe CS4 and cannot wait to upgrade… then charge him or her with sharing their new tips and tricks with the team. By giving ownership in playing around and uncovering the new bells & whistles - and presenting them to the team - you empower your employees and help educate everyone. Do this for every software upgrade! By giving each employee time to research, learn, and share the things they are passionate about, your team and business will grow.

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