Innovation is one of those words that seems to be getting a lot of attention. Their has been a big push in my home state of South Carolina to foster innovation and in turn spur economic development. Some of these initiatives involve Innoventure, Swamp Fox,  New Ideas for a New Carolina, SC Launch, New Carolina, etc.  I love that South Carolina is being proactive in creating initiatives to foster innovation however I’m going to admit that as a small business owner in an industry that you would think would be considered innovative is not really considered a place where innovation takes place compared to created advanced materials, new gadgets or business processes, etc.

While my company does provide print media services I will be focusing on the web design aspect of our business in this post. It’s been  11 years since I first got into developing web sites.  In was late 1996 or 1997 when I first started developing my web design skills and compared to today what I knew and practiced then is very primitive yet just about anybody who was labeled a “webmaster” back then was considered a leader and participant in innovation.  Today running a web design company has a very easy point of entry compared to other businesses, that is one reason I have so much competition within that aspect of my business. Yes, I watch my competition but instead of trying to beat them at what they do I’d rather concentrate on finding our own niche, targeting our customer base and providing solutions others don’t. We are not the perfect company for everyone but we love it when we develop a relationship with a client we are a perfect fit for.

I’m also passionate about being an innovative company and it goes beyond creating unique design or using the latest wiz-bang  technology to get people’s attention.  While web design itself is always open to innovative ways of designing and developing code I feel the greatest innovation still exists at the creation and distribution of compelling content. The technology of RSS has enabled and made blogging and podcasting a viable means of content distribution but I seem to get more “blank looks” when I tell people they need to take advantage of these methods. We have to ask ourselves, what are the road blocks and what can we innovate or bring to the table? How can we make it easier for customers to create, categorize and distribute compelling content? As a company we are exploring tools and yes, our on inventions that will make content creation and distribution easier for our clients.  What are your frustrations and how can we make the “web experience” more seamless, enjoyable, profitable and innovative for your company?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 11:57 am and is filed under Compelling Content, Greenville,SC, Innovation, Portable Media, Upstate,SC, blogging, podcasting, web design, web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.