Packaging News
For many, innovation means new ideas, but at DS Smith ideas are just the start. The word ‘innovation’ is frequently used by businesses to express forward thinking and creativity but it’s important to consider what this really means for our customers.
Research has shown effective innovation improves business performance and productivity; this inevitably means better results for customers.
People frequently confuse ideas with innovation and successful innovation with ‘lucky breaks’. At DS Smith we believe it is only when these ideas are developed to deliver real value that they become truly innovative.
Innovation can help you adapt in the marketplace, be a catalyst for growth and set you aside from your competitors.
Below I’ve shared five learnings from DS Smith on how to deliver innovation that will provide real business benefits:
1. Stay ahead of the crowd
You should constantly be reviewing and analysing the market. Whether this is competitor activity, the supply chain, technology or consumer behaviour. Having an ear to the ground is really important to understanding your customer and their customers’ needs and ensuring you stay ahead of the crowd. This will allow you to respond with innovative solutions that meet the demands of the market and your customers.
DS Smith’s early attempts to innovate were not always successful. So we set about positively influencing our success rate by speaking with and gaining a great deal of insight from global giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft. Our first step was to create a ‘safe to fail’ environment – so learning is a constant in our organisation, and we realise that effective innovation can only occur when the company’s staff are trusted to lead change.
2. Live and breathe innovation
Innovation should be a key element of your overall business plan, you cannot strive to deliver effective innovation for your customers if you don’t live and breathe this throughout your own business.
At DS Smith we ensure that innovation takes place in every department, at every level, across the entire business, every day. This means pushing the boundaries at all stages of collaboration with customers. We may make boxes but we aim to drive innovation by ensuring customers achieve more.
3. Invest where it matters
In order to keep pace with technological advancements and your market, investing where it matters is critical. To be visionary and forward thinking you need the latest technology at your fingertips.
We recognise we need to invest to innovate and are well into our £100m investment plan, which includes the installation of the first ever HP Inkjet Web Press. Having digital print at our disposal enables us to deliver products to market faster, customise batches to support brand and marketing initiatives, deliver short and long print runs, and ensure consistent print quality.
4. Inspire your workforce
Innovation in business is driven by inspirational and motivated leadership. You need to train and empower your employees to think innovatively and support the businesses ambitions to lead in this area. It is just as important to make sure innovation is delivered internally as it is externally.
One way in which we challenge ourselves and exceed the expectations of our customers is by ensuring we have an inspired, motivated and healthy workforce. As the saying goes, healthy body, healthy mind. We created a companywide ‘Healthy Hearts’ scheme, which ensures we have fit and motivated employees by organising activities to encourage them to lead healthy lives. Although this activity isn’t typically innovative, the programme makes our business stronger, healthier and more energised, and therefore drives innovation.
5. Think outside the box
And finally, innovation also means thinking outside the box (excuse the pun). Creativity plays a significant part in a business’ innovation drive. Make sure you connect with employees and customers and seek advice from all available resources so you always have a fresh perspective on challenges.
Drawing on external stimuli can spark inspiration and help drive innovation. We work with brands at our Impact Centre, which is similar in scale and designed to look and feel like an average sized high street convenience store, to help them understand retail trends and how they influence packaging design. This visual external experience helps brands think differently and inspires new ideas.
Innovation does not mean simply inventing ideas; innovation is being flexible, adapting your business model and making changes in order to deliver better products or services to respond to the needs of your customers.
If you establish the right culture and are brave enough to challenge thinking, then anyone’s bright idea can be turned into value adding innovation.
