Every industry today faces disruption and change at an unprecedented speed. E-commerce challenges traditional retail, technology companies are reshaping banking, and advancements like 3D printing are transforming manufacturing. In this environment, innovation is no longer a “nice-to-have”; it’s critical for future success. But innovating only within the confines of your own products, services, and industry norms is often not enough. To truly future-proof your Small or Medium-Sized Business (SMB) and lead your category, you need to look more broadly: embrace Cross-Industry Innovation and seek converging trends.

What Is Cross-Industry Innovation?

Cross-Industry Innovation is the powerful process of identifying analogies, trends, or successful approaches from other industries and creatively applying them to solve problems or create new value in your own business. Some simple examples illustrate the concept:

• Service Innovation (Baggage Carousel Meets Sushi Bar): A sushi restaurant implemented an airport-style baggage carousel on their dining counter, allowing customers to simply pick dishes as they passed. This created a unique customer experience while streamlining the ordering process.
• Product Innovation (Egg Cartons Meet Wine Shipping): Inspired by the protective design of molded pulp egg cartons, packaging companies now offer similar shippers for wine and other fragile goods, solving a common problem with a borrowed solution.
• Business Model Innovation (Mobile Phones Meet Car Insurance): Norwich Union in the UK (now Aviva) once introduced “pay-as-you-drive” car insurance, mirroring the “pay-as-you-go” plans common in the mobile phone industry, offering a new value proposition to certain customer segments.

The Limits of In-Industry Innovation vs. The Power of a Broader View

Most organizations naturally focus their innovation efforts on their known business and industry; product extensions, new features for existing customers, or incremental service improvements. While these efforts can support small growth spurts or aid client retention, they typically result in only incremental innovations. They rarely lead to the significant, transformational growth or market disruption that creates lasting competitive advantage.

Cross-industry innovation, however, forces you to break free from your sector’s ingrained assumptions and orthodoxies. It opens up a vastly wider pool of ideas and proven solutions that can be adapted to create something truly novel and valuable in your own context. As a fractional CIO, I often leverage my experience across diverse industries to bring fresh technological perspectives and solutions to SMBs; what worked brilliantly to solve a data management problem in manufacturing, for instance, might be adapted to revolutionize customer insight in a service business.

How SMBs Can Leverage Cross-Industry Innovation for Technology & Strategy

SMB leaders can foster this by:

1. Cultivating Curiosity: Encourage your team to look beyond your direct competitors. What interesting things are happening in completely unrelated fields? What technologies are enabling new business models elsewhere?
2. Seeking Analogous Problems: What challenges in other industries are structurally similar to yours, even if the context is different? How did they solve them?
3. Looking for Converging Trends: How are trends in technology, consumer behavior, or societal shifts (which often cut across industries) creating new opportunities or threats for your business?
4. Engaging External Perspectives: Advisors (like a fractional CIO), partners, or even new hires from different industries can bring invaluable “outsider” thinking.

What’s Next

Don’t let your industry’s current norms define the limits of your SMB’s potential. By consciously looking for inspiration and proven solutions in other sectors, and by understanding how converging trends are reshaping the broader landscape, you can uncover powerful opportunities for cross-industry innovation. This approach can help you develop truly differentiating strategies, create new customer value, and ensure your business is not just keeping up, but leading the way to “Succeed Sooner.”

Is your SMB looking for fresh perspectives to solve its challenges or unlock new growth opportunities through technology? If you’re ready to explore how insights from across industries can inform a more innovative and impactful IT strategy, let’s connect with Succeed Sooner Consulting.