How To Foster An Entrepreneurial Work Environment And Innovate Like A Startup

Suresh Menon, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Software Solutions at Zebra Technologies.

In 2016, transportation adviser Paul Barter made headlines for claiming that, on average, cars are parked 95% of the time. Autonomous vehicles invite a new possibility. Instead of individual car ownership and the infrastructure necessary to support it, like six-lane expressways and parking garages, what if we could simply order a ride whenever we needed it? Self-driving cars would be driving most of the time, but there’d be fewer cars, less emissions and more space to live.

Many argue that autonomous vehicles are too distant from reality, and these claims are not meritless. But the population is growing and there may very well not be enough room for everyone to own a car at some point. We may need fleets of self-driving cars.

The truth is, no industry is immune to disruption. For retailers, having the right people in the right place at the right time is critical to employee and customer satisfaction. Employees want scheduling transparency, store managers want to save time assigning and executing tasks and customers want assistance on the store floor.

As a leader in the dynamic retail technology space, we must be forward thinking. Encouraging and fostering an entrepreneurial environment is essential to innovation. When we can identify and embrace new technologies that possess the ability to positively impact an entire industry, we can continue to revolutionize it.

Maintaining a continuous feedback loop will help you achieve a better understanding of both retailers’ and consumers’ needs. Acting on this feedback will keep you ahead of the curve. It’s no different than the innovation and thought process that led to the advent of autonomous cars.

So, how exactly do you keep that edge?

Foster an entrepreneurial mindset.

One of the biggest barriers to innovation is group-think within an organization. When leaders and teams aren’t aligned or a static culture is entrenched, it becomes increasingly difficult to enact real change. Cutting the red tape isn’t about foregoing security or quality; it’s about achieving buy-in from the top down.

Startups are often lauded for their spirit of innovation, which may come easier due to having fewer decision makers. Championing new ideas and creating cutting-edge solutions can be possible in any work environment if colleagues are encouraged to enact change.

As an innovator, you need to help leaders understand that what has proven to be successful in the past may not stand the test of time. Since we acquired another company last year, new team members have been challenging their larger teams to improve existing processes and build new ones from scratch.

A successful business is one that communicates with its customers and helps them solve today’s problems. But one that stays successful requires using an agile approach to sort through massive pools of data to derive best next actions that prepare customers for tomorrow, next year and 10 years from now.

Thinking and acting like a startup means taking bold and creative bets. These are calculated risks, not coin tosses. Companies, regardless of size, that can nurture and embrace an entrepreneurial mindset are the businesses that will prevail.

Identify trends early to remain disruptive.

Today’s retailers require modern, end-to-end technology solutions that provide visibility into everything from inventory to shopping behavior and deliver better, faster service to continue to meet and exceed customer expectations. Identifying trends early is imperative to staying disruptive, as is constantly anticipating what tools a retailer may need next. A great example of this is the pandemic, which helped accelerate existing trends, such as buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) and buy online, return in store (BORIS).

No one could have predicted the impact that the pandemic would make in 2020, but as technologists, we are always anticipating how we can enhance and improve the customer’s shopping experience. The advent of appointment-setting technologies, which let customers tailor their in-store or virtual experience, was born out of this line of thinking. Deployed during the pandemic, appointment-setting solutions allowed retailers to reopen stores safely and remain in compliance with ever-changing local mandates while giving customers control over their shopping experience.

What’s next?

We believe that much of our company’s success can be attributed to providing holistic and evolving solutions for customers that empower the front line of business to achieve a performance edge. We’re constantly engaged in a feedback loop, learning what works and where the solution could be enhanced to meet changing retailer and consumer needs.

Many of our customers have received enough positive feedback from their own shoppers that they’ll continue to leverage technologies adopted in early 2020, even legacy solutions like BOPIS and BORIS, well into the future.

Thinking strategically about what’s next in the world of retail and anticipating what may be of import in this dynamic environment will ensure that customers have the solutions they need to solve challenges when they arise.

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