Innovation is Creativity in Action
Innovation is often used synonymously with creativity and ingenuity. Creativity is what drives businesses forward. It’s what inspired the opening of a business in the first place. But creativity and innovation don’t just stop once the doors are open. Businesses must continue innovating and fostering unique ideas to remain current with their clientele. To be truly innovative, ideas must also be useful, novel, and provide viable solutions to problems.
Big or small, simple or complex, innovation can be a product, service, business model, or strategy that’s both unique and useful, while providing value in some way, within a company or to a consumer. Innovation in both customer-facing and internal aspects of a business is essential to remaining relevant.
Many industries seem to be changing at the speed of light. New concepts and designs are almost obsolete by the time they’re released. A business that doesn’t innovate to keep up with the wave, may find itself lagging behind its competitors. A successful business reads the room and thinks several steps ahead of where they are now, in hopes of staving off unforeseen factors that may swallow the unsuspecting.
Investing in innovation is an investment in the future of your company’s people, partners, and growth.
Barriers to Innovation
Unfortunately, many businesses feel that they are struggling to make their innovation dreams a reality. One thing that may be driving this is complacency on the part of decision-makers to take necessary steps forward. For example, Canadian organizations are striving to ramp up innovation and digital transformation which is a major driver of innovation- without much success, however. A recent survey suggested that only 1/3 of Canadian businesses prioritized investment in technology infrastructure this year; only 27% considered digitizing business processes; even fewer businesses – at just 20% – considered updating legacy technology as a priority.
As we’ve just recently come through Cybersecurity month, these statistics are rather alarming.
Another barrier to innovation is that many companies are struggling to find the extra revenue, after having just barely survived a pandemic, to invest in researching and developing new processes, products, and technologies. It’s not that companies don’t want to innovate. It’s just that it can take a long time to receive any return on the monies invested in innovating.
Everybody Innovates
Innovation isn’t limited to computers.
Printers, food producers, manufacturers, breweries, and sustainable energy producers… all need to innovate or their businesses won’t survive, especially where so much of the world’s economy is driven by e-Commerce.
Much of the world’s innovation is fuelled by necessity. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Many of the above companies and their cross-industry counterparts conceive and design a product or process because they see a need. A company often decides to innovate or prioritizes projects that aim to solve a problem that a customer has raised. In this case, more internal innovation projects may get deprioritized and forgotten.
When your staff is focused solely on goals, ROIs, and deliverables to keep the lights on, it can leave little room for anything else.
SR&ED Tax Incentives Fund Innovation
This is where SR&ED tax credits can help! Tax credits received through the Canadian Federal Government’s Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) Tax Incentive program can help offset costs to help business owners foster and invest in innovation and fresh perspectives to grow their company into something truly special.
Innovation brings with it unlimited possibilities. With the help of SR&ED tax credits, your company can spend its time doing what they do best.
Barriers to Claiming SR&ED Tax Credits
One of the barriers to claiming SR&ED is the assumption that SR&ED is just for companies building artificial intelligence technologies, robots, androids, and something you see on Star Trek or in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Another barrier is determining which parts of a business’s innovative processes might be eligible for SR&ED tax credits.
Another is the intimidation of learning the ins and outs of the program and preparing the documentation needed to submit a claim.
SRED Unlimited Breaks Down Barriers
SR&ED tax credits are available to many industries: printers, manufacturers, energy producers, sustainable technologies, holistic preventative and recovering therapies, cannabis growers, home and business construction, wineries, distilleries, breweries, and commercial food producers….
As for meeting claim submission eligibility requirements, the SR&ED Tax Incentive experts at SRED Unlimited can identify eligible R&D expenditures that other consultants might miss. We also minimize the intimidation factor by managing the entire claim preparation process ﹘ collecting details from involved employees, writing the reports, compiling SR&ED-eligible expenditures, and submitting the claim.
It’s quick, it’s easy, and it minimizes the time your team is away from what they need to be doing. Our turnkey-style operation lets your staff focus on their own work, not the administrative and technical details of preparing SR&ED claims.
All it takes to get started is a FREE, no-obligation 15-minute consultation.
