By Jen Reiner, Founder & Principal, Align

Many leaders see innovation as risky—but in reality, staying the same for too long can be riskier. Since products and services must evolve to be attractive to customers and competitive in the market, confidence with innovation is a strength that all Lancaster County business leaders need. This is probably why the innovation sessions at the Chamber’s Small Business Summit on October 29 were filled to capacity.

The good news is that innovation isn’t just for large corporations or tech companies. It’s a skill that can be learned, practiced, and managed by companies of any size, in any sector. In fact, small and mid-sized businesses have natural advantages—they’re often resourceful, close to customers and employees, and motivated by service and reputation. These are powerful ingredients for innovation.  

“You made it attainable for small businesses,” said Michelle Salinas, a session attendee and Owner of Your Language Connection, a language translation and training company. “I’ve started doing a monthly innovation session with my leadership team,” said Salinas. “Given federal funding changes and tariffs, we need to identify other customer segments,” she said. “We’re looking for the problems we can solve for companies with the resources to invest in language services-” actions that reflect foundational steps in the innovation process. 

Think of innovation as part culture, part process. At Align, our framework for innovation is The 4 ‘I’s of Strategic Innovation—Insights, Ideas, Increments, and Impact. This makes innovation tangible and repeatable. At the Summit, I shared 8 behaviors, representing work from each phase, that leaders can use to start building competence and confidence with the strategic innovation process. These can be explored by an innovation team one month at a time as a pathway for launching new opportunities. 

• Make a Commitment – Define why innovation matters, set goals, and clarify your focus areas.
• Monitor Trends – Discuss changes in your industry and evolving customer needs.
• Ask Customers – Be curious and systematic to identify recurring themes in customer feedback.
• Strive for Objectivity – Identify internal biases (expert bias, action bias, etc) and engage people with diverse perspectives.
• Define a Customer Problem Worth Solving – Identify a specific target audience and uncover their unmet needs.
• Make Space for Ideas – Provide context, time, and creative facilitation that makes brainstorming focused and actionable.
• Connect the People – Get constructive feedback from customers and colleagues to validate concepts before overengineering a flawed idea.
• Share the Story – Identify leading indicators of traction and capture lessons learned.

These behaviors can be powerful—or just a list of tasks. The difference is how you launch them. A well-run kickoff session ignites momentum and sets the tone. You need to spark the human alchemy that unleashes the process’s full potential.

When you show that innovation is important by providing the support your team needs, they’ll be more willing to work through the obstacles and share insights and wild ideas.

Here’s what a kickoff session is for:

• Clarify why innovation matters and connect it to business priorities.
• Generate positive energy by making it collaborative and forward-thinking.
• Surface obstacles together. If you don’t acknowledge the challenges, you can’t work through them.
• Define scope as a team to gather insights and build buy-in with sales, marketing, and operations.

Innovation doesn’t happen because one or two people decide the company should be more innovative. A well-run kickoff session turns innovation from a concept into a practical, team-driven process, where key leaders understand where and how they will contribute.

These behaviors, launched with an intentional kick-off session, will give structure to your ambitions to innovate and grow! 

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