Within the landscape where Yellowgrape operates, the building block of innovation is a crucial role. Innovation is the engine behind being able to predict, optimize and achieve e-commerce growth for our customers. At Yellowgrape, we therefore see innovation not as a separate project, but as an ongoing process. The common thread in our vision and approach. It is not without reason that it is one of our core values: Pioneering. You can read how we pursue this promise and created a culture of innovation in this story.
At Yellowgrape, we want to remain the absolute number 1 agency in the e-commerce landscape. Externally on results and internally on development. We only achieve that if we continuously try to improve ourselves. But also: that everyone knows the ultimate goal we want to achieve together with our customers.
Within our innovation culture, innovation and improvement has therefore been elevated to one of the core activities of our organization. All colleagues receive the trust and resources of their supervisor to experiment, make mistakes and make improvements in and around the entire organization. You are encouraged to look beyond revenue targets and declarability.
To pursue this promise, we have jointly set a number of preconditions at Yellowgrape. These preconditions form the essential basis for creating an innovation culture. Without these preconditions, innovation remains an empty term and therefore too abstract. The preconditions form the foundation and make it possible to anchor innovation. They provide guidance on how everyone interacts with each other. But what is actually our innovation culture and how do we achieve this on the basis of the three preconditions?
The e-commerce landscape is an extremely complex and dynamic field. The essence of Yellowgrape is that all our colleagues understand this field. This virtuosity depends on undiminished commitment and commitment. Both internally and in cooperation with our customers and partners. For example, we hear daily from users and stakeholders what they like and dislike. What they miss or want to see differently. It's a shame if this valuable input remains unused. That is why this input is actually used within Yellowgrape. Colleagues are also challenged to turn their insights into good ideas.
To make this possible, there is room for personal initiative and fixed times and places have been set up at Yellowgrape. Here, ideas are not just collected, evaluated and supplemented where necessary. People are also triggered to actually implement the ideas. We do this both internally and in collaboration with our customers.
This gives our colleagues the space to experiment on a small and large scale. Do you have a good idea? Just try it out! And please share the idea with others. This requires the leadership style at Yellowgrape to work on the basis of trust. This is how we guide our colleagues within the set vision and facilitate them with their idea. Together, we ensure that we can learn from any mistakes.
Innovating is a matter of experimenting, making mistakes and reusing or improving the good things. This process requires sufficient time. The experience is that deadlines and other forms of time pressure therefore backfire. When employees have to continuously work on conversion targets and today's to-do list, there is no time for anything innovative.
From both the cooperation with our customers and our internal projects, there is a clear framework in which creativity and innovations are welcome. Does the type of cooperation with the customer offer room for improvement in the process? Or just to pick up suggestions for existing campaigns? This also determines the space and time to experiment on the projects.
Is the experimentation directly declarable or does it require investment from Yellowgrape? Our employees manage the “innovation budget” themselves. Indeed, together with a team lead, they coordinate how the available hours are used in relation to the innovation (s). This is how we make it clear whether the pressure is on the operational boiler and innovation goes before operation.
In our field, technology is essential to support innovation. Internally, it is particularly important to choose the right technology when it comes to transparency. With the help of collaborative platforms such as Miro and FigJam, we can keep an eye on the goals and work together on the initiatives devised.
Combined with Slack and ClickUp, we create a marketplace-like ecosystem where everyone can contribute ideas and opportunities. The ecosystem is primarily focused on cooperation with the customer and uses the customer lifecycle as a starting point. Anyone can join someone else's project. The ecosystem thus becomes an inexhaustible source of innovation, aimed at achieving business goals. This immediately shows the history of previous initiatives. We keep track of progress and give each other — customers, management and employees alike — insight into the process. This improves engagement and keeps everyone sharp to actually implement ideas and innovations.
Technological developments in the e-commerce landscape are following rapidly. Keeping up and leading the way in this landscape is essential. These are requirements to remain distinctive from... other agencies. Technology has a key role here and is an important pillar externally in collaborating with our technology partners (tooling).
In the cooperation between agencies and technology partners (tooling), we often work with a preferred supplier model and kickback fees. Motivation to work together is then purely financially driven. This puts business goals, customer success and innovations in second place. Yellowgrape completely turns this around and consciously selects the importance of customer success and innovative strength in the collaboration. Want to lead the way together and thus achieve customer success. This requires a 'fit' within the collaborating teams. The input and feedback from all colleagues play an important role here, for example, to define the roadmap of technological innovations.
If there is no longer a structure for determining the effect of innovation, we can't expect it to become an entrenched part of our culture either. Determining whether innovations are - or can become - successful has therefore become a recurring part of our organization.
Innovation projects at Yellowgrape diverge across two axes. The vertical axis from internal, personal development to external customer and industry innovations. And the horizontal axis from improvement to groundbreaking. Making success measurable at Yellowgrape is not only based on financial targets. Earlier, we mentioned that deadlines and other forms of targets actually backfire on the drive to innovate.
The combination of ambitious customer goals and a strong innovation culture is a powerful tool for achieving and managing next-level e-commerce growth. Sounds good? Then the next question is: is your company ready?
