Innovation, Research and Development are no longer buzzwords, often heard in the tech or science communities. These are now necessities for any business in the 21st Century. The internet and technology revolution, the COVID pandemic, climate change and sustainability, and Brexit are just some of key world events that have completely shifted the way businesses need to operate if they are to thrive, remain relevant and future-proof. Whether it’s innovating and evolving your product or service, your operations, your company culture, your hiring processes or, in fact, any aspect of your business, it’s important for you to develop a culture of ‘innovation always on’ and push for this from your employees, regardless of their role. Innovation is everyone’s responsibility and we can help you to hire candidates that have the drive, imagination and positivity to bring this sentiment into their role and your business.
It’s important for businesses to evolve their offer and begin growing a pipeline of projects, products, services and offers. This enables you to develop multiple revenue streams, remain relevant to your customers, adapt to changing circumstances and build new audiences and enter new markets. Hiring people who can drive innovation and R&D throughout the business is fantastic investment in your business, in people and in your future.
Sadly, so many notable brands around the world have since disappeared due to being disrupted by businesses who thought differently and were able to evolve the way things are done in their industry. For the most part, the reason these businesses fail is because they are not agile enough to adapt to change and don’t invest any time or resources into their long term future, for risk of disrupting what they already have. This is a flawed way of thinking and we have seen this proven time and time again. Hiring key personnel who develop an evolving portfolio of projects that address short term wins but also open up more radical long term concepts for your business is a great way to secure your future, and scale your business for future growth success.
A happy workforce is a productive workforce. People want to work for innovative companies that are evolving, pushing boundaries, flexible and agile and addressing and solving real-world problems for people. A good staff culture is becoming less about salary and perks and more working a role that sparks interest, excites and gives the employee some sort of purpose that what they are doing makes a difference. If you want a positive, active, productive and happy team, introduce innovation into the culture and get them involved. A good innovation team can really transform a business on so many levels.
The UK Government, and Governments around the world and working hard to incentivise and push innovation and new Research and Development. They want companies to be developing new solutions, products and services that improves the economy, solves problems and encourages advancement. So, generous tax breaks and incentives are available for those businesses who want to invest in R&D.
Whenever a new person is hired by an organisation, there is a real opportunity to inject a fresh burst of energy, motivation, new thinking and ideas into the business. As a new employee, especially one that is hired in an innovation or R&D role, you have a great chance to shake things up and create new, exciting projects. If you’re looking to make a difference and enjoy the thrill of developing new projects and ideas, then a role in innovation or R&D could be a great opportunity to make that a reality. We can help you find innovation job vacancies and match you with businesses that are seeking new thinking. Here’s some of the benefits of working in an innovation or R&D based role.
Work should be a vocation, a lifestyle and part of who you are. It needs to spark your interest and keep you engaged, just as you expect aspects of your personal life to do the same. In today’s 21st Century work environment, employers are looking for more than just those with the technical skills, but also, they want to hire candidates that have vision, a positive approach to new ideas, motivated and interested in what’s happening around them. If you can bring an element of innovation to your role, whatever the nature of it, then you bring a fresh perspective and employers want and need that. But also, taking this approach to your work makes it far more interesting and fulfilling for you and when we spend so much time on our careers, it is crucial for us to enjoy the job and the process of innovation, new thinking and creating change.
By its very nature, innovation requires lots of trialling, piloting, testing and experimenting. It should never be mundane and always evolving. When working in such a role, your job is to push the boundaries, provoke the business and break new ground. Whatever your skillset or department, if you can bring innovation and new thinking to the job role, then you’re in a great position to develop a colourful and vibrant career.
A key aspect of innovation and R&D is engaging with and working with people and organisations that are external to the company you work for. By reaching out and collaborating with external stakeholders you get to meet new people, work on fresh ideas, keep abreast of the latest industry changes and technology advancements, and build great opportunities for networking.
Innovation and R&D requires the ability to be agile and think differently. Therefore, typically, people working in this role have a lot of autonomy to manage their own projects and workflows. Whilst it’s rarely a ‘free for all’, there does tend to be a lot of flexibility in an innovation role. You may work unique hours, travel more, collaborate externally, trial new concepts, build prototypes and be tasked with solving problems. To do this, there needs to be an element of freedom and agility applied to the role. Of course, with this freedom comes responsibility. You need to be able to manage time, budgets, people and achieve results. But if you are a creative person and like the idea of breaking new ground, then an autonomous role of this nature could be right up your street.
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