Steve Jobs famously said that “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”  Most small business owners don’t have the luxury of a mega-budget design team and huge research and development lab, but there are some simple techniques you can use to make your business more innovative.

Step 1: Explore some extremes. No, this does not involve trekking through arctic tundra.  Simply list a few adjectives on a piece of paper that represent some extremes that could be relevant to your business.  “Hot – cold,” “small – large,”  “cheap – expensive,” whatever simple adjectives come to mind.  Now for each of these pairs, ask yourself how you could change your business at those extremes.

For example, let’s try “short” (as opposed to “long”) for the case of a salon owner.  Suppose that the standard appointment time is an hour.  What if you created a short service – one that could be provided in just 3 minutes?  If you’re like me, your first reaction is “Ridiculous!  Nobody would put in the effort to come in for a 3-minute service.  And anyway, how can I hire a person to stand around most of the day only to work the occasional 3 minutes?”  Well … maybe this service would be attractive to customers who happen to arrive a few minutes early?  Or as an impulse-buy to folks walking by on their lunch break?  Or could be sold as an add-on to the main appointment?  And as for staffing, maybe this is something that could be done by your receptionist equipped with a hands-free telephone headset with an easy-to-reach “hold” button?  Or maybe the service is 3-minutes in a Brookstone-style massage chair (or a simple vibrating foot-massager) requiring no staffing at all.  Or maybe it’s a self-service before-and-after photo that clients can then share for fun with their friends (“Please enter your email address, sit, and click ‘snap photo’.”)

To continue reading this post, click on the links to see part 2 and part 3

From time to time, members from the Vistaprint staff will contribute articles to the Vistaprint Small Business Blog. Today we have a post from Jay Moody, Sr. Manager for Research and Innovation.