Fostering a culture of continuous innovation

Fostering continuous innovation is one of the best ways for businesses to adapt and succeed in our rapidly changing world. But for many companies, doing so can be a difficult and challenging process.

The benefits are clear. Innovation can create efficiency, effectiveness and a focus on long-term growth—everything that’s needed for companies to be successful.

Vijay Mehta, Chief Innovation Officer at Experian Software Solutions, says businesses must innovate to keep moving forward. “Innovation is more than important,” he says. “It’s critical. If a company’s not innovating, they’re not succeeding, and they’re not going to survive.

“Innovation allows for competitive advantage, it allows for streamlined process, and it allows companies to create unique products and services that no one else is doing.”

Mehta says Experian excels in generating a culture of innovation by focusing on three key areas: people, process and technology.

“First and foremost, it’s always about the people,” he says. “People being your employees, but also your customers. For your internal people, you have to create a safe environment where they feel comfortable experimenting and failing. We call it ‘fail fast,’ because if you’re not doing this, you’re not embracing and learning from your mistakes—and thus you’re not innovating.”

The second area Experian focuses on is the process needed to develop an innovative culture.

Not having a process or system, Mehta says, can be like visiting the supermarket without a list or when you are hungry. “You end up looking left and right and you can’t get things done,” he says.

Technology and technology enablement is the third component.  

“At Experian,” he says, “we've been focusing on leading-edge technology and how it can be pragmatically used for innovation throughout our entire organization. Successful companies always leverage technology to innovate.”

While innovation can make companies more successful, it can also make a huge difference in our daily lives.

“There’s a story about a gentleman in the late 18th century named Whitcomb Judson,” Mehta says. “His friend couldn’t bend over because he had a disability, so Judson created something to help this gentleman tie his shoes. He designed a fastener system that could be done and undone with one hand, which later became known as the zipper.

“At Experian, we had a similar moment about six years ago. We talked to our customers, and they told us that it was difficult to access our universe of data, to use that data to create, monitor, and explain analytics, artificial intelligence and decisioning strategies, and then to deploy those strategies and analytics to help them make decisions, activate audiences and originate loans.

“We created the Ascend platform to solve that. That was our zipper moment.”

Finally, Mehta also stresses the importance of creativity.

“Creativity is a theme that you’ll see across all industries when it comes to innovation,” he says. “And you need to have comfort in pushing the boundaries and taking a little bit of risk. You can’t innovate without risk.”

To find out more about the Experian Exchange series, go to Experian.com/exchange.