Bill Schultz, CEO and managing director–Caribbean for Pan-American Life Insurance Group (PALIG), says local businesses need to strengthen their service culture and implement performance driven models of management to better set the stage for innovation in T&T's business landscape.
"Before companies can innovate, they've got to improve and most of the time, they need to catch up," he said when he spoke recently on the topic of Innovation: A Model for Business Success at the Arthur Lok Jack School of Business.
Schultz, who has more than 30 years of experience in the international insurance industry, shared his perspective on the factors that lead to genuine innovation.
He said: "The first thing to understand is that true innovation is relatively rare.
"In order for something to be innovative it has to be the first of its kind and not a copy.
"That is what gives innovation its transformative nature."
In contrast to innovation, Schultz noted, there is gradual step by step change which begins by catching up to industry or global standards and is then followed by improvement.
"You often hear people talk about innovative customer service but the truth is that most companies, if not all of them, strive to deliver excellent service. It is no longer a new idea," Schulz said.
"Even when we add features to our web-sites, introduce new systems and procedures or add customer portals to our long list of services, these are just improvements."
