There is always room for innovation in a business – that is, doing something new with your products, services and processes. In fact, it’s essential to survival.

Taking actions, even small ones, can strengthen the business today and support growth for years to come. These changes can have many origins, inspirations, and purposes. But when they’re good for the environment, they often have clear economic benefits too.

If we look at resource use globally, with over 100 billion tonnes of resources taken from the planet every year and less than 20% of it recycled,  we can start to see a conundrum forming. If we take out more than we effectively reuse, supply chains will be put under increasing pressure, and prices are only likely to increase. 

This effect can be scaled down to our day-to-day lives. The cost of drinks in a pub, or a meal in a restaurant, has increased significantly in recent years. The average pint in Britain is now more than £5, with a major factor being energy price rises.

 This does not mean customers completely stop buying altogether, but they are becoming more considered in how they spend. 

Make your business leaner, greener and more competitive

The statistics above highlight the importance of keeping your materials and assets in use for longer and making energy use as efficient as possible. This allows you to keep closer control of the product lifecycle, and specifically the value created. 

What Vinted teaches us about innovation and growth

Vinted is a prime example. Other second-hand clothing markets existed, including huge household names like Ebay and Facebook Marketplace, but creating innovative processes and technologies to make the product as easy as possible to use has led to the exponential rise of the company, to the extent that it is now the third-largest clothing retailer, and the leading clothing retailer in France.

Customers feel like they are getting good value and convenience, with the added benefit of reusing those valuable planetary resources and participating in the circular economy (whether that is what drives them or not).

What if the value being generated by Vinted through second-hand goods had been harnessed directly by the original business that sold the clothes? This is where eco-innovation can create the most value for the business.

More real-world examples of innovation that works

Other examples of positive environmental or social impact while increasing revenue opportunities (and giving customers something they want):

• Discounts for using your own coffee cup – The customer is happy with a reduced price, the company saves money on the cup itself (not to mention the time spent ordering and refilling stock), meanwhile offering the opportunity to sell own-branded reusable cups
• Subscription models for household goods such as ethical toilet paper – Taking the effort out of re-ordering basic items for customers, while providing positive environmental and social impacts using sales revenue, with a strong ‘feel-good factor’ for customers
• Smart energy management for homes and businesses – Being able to control the heating from your phone, not only convenient to manage energy use and costs, but also allowing flexibility; the settings can be changed anywhere from any location, so it can work with the needs of the people who live or work there. 

Support to help you innovate and grow

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are plenty of enablers out there to help make it work for your business. This could be using new processes and technologies like 3D printing for fast prototyping, predictive AI models to make processes super-efficient, or software to manage the closer customer relationships needed to make innovative business models like servitisation work smoothly.

Along the way, you may need to collaborate with others, perhaps with leading academic institutions doing cutting-edge research, service-based businesses such as logistics providers, or software developers who can translate your in-depth understanding of a target market into an operational product. 

The Innovation team at the GM Business Growth Hub are here to help at all stages of this journey, from kick-starting innovative thinking to getting a commercial product ‘over the line’ and generating revenue. We are fully funded at no ‘point of use’ cost to the business, so get in touch with us today.

Contact us