Innovation. The latest trend, the next big thing. We’re all looking to embrace innovation in our strategies, but we also have KPI’s to hit. Let us take you through our formula for a winning combination of performance and innovation.
Innovation is about more than just the newest platform or the newest technology on the market. It’s about new methods, new strategies, and a new approach to the job at hand.
Sometimes innovation comes from a fresh perspective. It comes from combining the tried and tested with the creative and unique. It comes from your passion and your open mind.
When we talk to our clients about innovation, we often ask them to look inward at how they can innovate their current offering. Can you be more creative in your content? Can you shift to a new method of delivery? Can you be sure you know where your prospective students are, both physically and digitally?
It’s this type of thinking that gives you the breathing space to be truly innovative. We’ve developed a unique way to quantify innovation – our 80/20 method. This gives you a benchmark – a real line in the sand to identify, in a realistic way, how you can innovate both within the confines of resource and budget.
So how does it work?
Spend 80% of your time, money and brainpower on innovating what already exists.
Audit your offering – explore what’s working, understand the new trends and find what works for you. Sometimes, we spend so much time wondering what’s working for brands outside of our control – competitors, the up-and-coming start-ups, the overnight influencers, that we overlook the fundamentals. Of course, looking outwardly to find inspiration and understanding the landscape is crucial, but so is exploring your own route to the market.
This 80% is all about how you can make the methods that work for you work harder, better, faster and stronger. It’s about incremental change to find the peak – without the risk of the unknown. Innovating the existing.
But what about the other 20%, I heard you cry!
The 80/20 rule exists to keep balance. With four-fifths of your energy being channelled into the known, this balance gives you the creative freedom to dip your toe into the not-so-calm waters of the unknown.
Take a risk. Invest some time and money into the newest social platform that no-one at the institution has really explored. Take that crazy idea that came to you on your Sunday afternoon walk and put it on the table. Choose the artwork that ‘nobody has tried before’.
The 20% is reserved for unapologetic failures, surprising triumphs and for really getting yourself out of the ‘because we do it every year’ mentality. It’s with those fresh perspectives, those exciting ideas and the balance of the already-successful and the could-be-successful.
In today’s world, it’s crucial to maintain an edge as an institution. We all talk about crowded markets, saturated spaces and competition like we’ve never seen before, and yet our approach is often to just do more, not to do better. That’s why for us at Unicom, the 80/20 rule has become a fundamental part of our strategy when working with universities. It gives us all the ability to innovate in the right places and the freedom to explore new areas, in harmony.
We combine the experience and expertise of higher education specialists with the creativity of our collective. We’d love to not only help your competitors to innovate. We’d love to help you.
So, let’s chat.
