What does innovation mean to you?

That sounds like an ice breaker at a corporate meeting. And, it could be. But it’s a much more fundamental question to managing forward the disruptions occurring daily within the four walls of distribution and manufacturing.

Innovation is a key influence as to how you and your colleagues approach your business today and into the future. Innovation is also central to how materials handling suppliers think and what they think about. Ultimately, innovation is the sum of all the moving parts that transform challenges into opportunities for greatness, separating your company from competitors.

But, as we all know, innovation is tough. It doesn’t just happen. It requires grit and an ability to zig when you’ve been more comfortable zagging. That isn’t easy, but it is manageable. In short, innovation is something you need to make a part of your company’s genetic code. Here are what six companies say innovation means to each of them.

Fergal Glynn, vice president of marketing, 6 River Systems

Innovation means proactivity and collaboration. When pragmatic solutions are presented proactively, it’s possible to dig into a solution that shows the underlying innovation a company needs to bring to the market. Tomorrow’s challenges can only be addressed if engineers, data scientists, marketers and others come together to discuss the current situation and collaborate on solutions. It’s all about optimizing every process in the supply chain.

Faster warehouse fulfillment is dependent on new technologies that generate both immediate and long-term value for the operation. Almost by definition, these technologies and related design principles almost require out-of-the-box thinking to make innovation successful.

The two greatest measures here are increased efficiencies and competitive edge. When warehouse leaders prioritize technological innovation, they’re typically replacing outdated systems with more intelligent and advanced systems. Efficiencies skyrocket. When that happens, a company’s competitive edge follows suit. They naturally begin to outpace their competitors. And, this can lead to more customers and more success overall.

Such success also helps to attract a broader, more qualified talent pool. Prospective employees are always looking for innovative companies as well as more fun and unique ways to perform their jobs. People are drawn to new technologies that can help in their day-to-day work environment.

John Santagate, vice president of robotics, HighJump/Körber Supply Chain

Making a meaningful change is what innovation is all about. It requires taking risk, thinking outside the box and having the courage to do something that hasn’t been done before. And while most think of innovation as a big thing, often more subtle innovations have an even bigger impact.

Take how Netflix changed the entertainment content delivery industry. By changing the delivery mechanism and fulfillment model, the company completely eliminated an established market, built a new one and still continues to evolve. That’s meaningful change.

Innovation comes in three different forms in supply chain: product, operational and ecosystem.

Product innovation is not just about new products, but step change to existing products. It also includes shifts in delivery models of the products and development of new ranges of product offerings.

Operational innovation requires agility and an ability to adapt rapidly to market demands and shifts by evolving existing operational models. We can make our customers better by mobilizing them around a new technology.

Ecosystem innovation allows us to identify and adapt new, valuable opportunities for our customers. It lets us first identify when and where we need to improve the robustness of our partner’s ecosystem and extend into new ventures through non-traditional channels.

Companies need to take a whiteboard approach to the disruptions occurring in materials handling today. Rethinking traditional processes is essential and so are new technologies. Key ones here include robotics, artificial intelligence, spacial awareness, 3D printing and autonomous vehicles. It’s a guarantee that materials handling operations today will look a lot different with a new approach to process design and acceptance of a new, more sophisticated technology stack.

Bill Abington, executive vice president of operations, & Paul Ancona, vice president of engineering, Medline Industries

Our customers look to Medline to collaborate on and implement strategic initiatives that help them meet the biggest challenges in healthcare. Innovation can take many forms from multiple small changes within a process to a radical redesign of the entire process.

We do this by solving an existing problem in our own supply chain or our customer’s supply chain. The second approach is to document and flow-chart a process within a supply chain to find areas of inefficiency or higher error rates and then make changes. The third is the most radical approach—a complete disruption by sending our experts to partner with customers and take a whiteboard approach to find a new solution.

Fortunately, new technologies, such as Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and digitization to name three, enable old problems to be approached in new ways. We have a strong bias to embrace and adapt new technology, rather than get disrupted by the technology of others. Key materials handling technologies range from automated goods-to-person systems to robots and autonomous lift trucks.

Ultimately, continuous improvement is the name of the game. There is no end to the game. If you don’t continue to think out of the box, adapt and challenge the norm, you will find yourself out of the game before you know it. Disruption is the new norm. Don’t be afraid of new technology. Don’t be afraid of failure. And, don’t be afraid of change. Everything that we try may not work, but it helps point us in the right direction to find something that does work.

John Rosenberger, director of iWarehouse Gateway and Global Telematics, The Raymond Corporation

At the top of the innovation pyramid sits worker safety and comfort. To make that possible, the lift truck increasingly has to help drivers better understand their surroundings at all times. Traditionally, that ability has focused on the design of the truck hardware. And that is still the case; however, information and software are taking on new importance to improving productivity while keeping drivers comfortable and everyone safe.

In fact, technology on our trucks is changing much faster than the hardware. However, it’s the hardware that is becoming an information platform. We are entering a time when on-board as well as wearable technology offers a more in-depth and granular view of the operating environment. Gut feel is being replaced by real data.

And when companies network that data, they can leverage it to develop solutions to operating challenges across a facility. The days of each truck as an independent piece of equipment are fading quickly. It’s now all about the fleet. Plus, we’re now in a position to offer software as a service (SaaS) that can be turned on for peak periods and turned off when that data is not much needed. Different functionality and features can now be an operating expense versus capital expense using SaaS.

These and other innovations are essential to embracing the changing operating environment of warehouses and DCs. As e-commerce grows, we are developing ways to optimize operations before introducing automation. Connecting your data sources to provide a more complete view of your operations is a key first step, followed by using this data to find areas that may benefit from operator assist technologies like pick-to-light or zoning and positioning. Another optimization step can be realized through shared autonomy, using people to manage exceptions and automation to handle the rest. It’s a matter of taking advantage of people, hardware and information and using connected devices for the safety, comfort and productivity of all.

Chris Arnold, president and COO, TREW Automation

Innovation is all about challenging the status quo. It starts with a vision of a better solution, then looking at the application of data, practices, requirements, hardware and software that could be used to deliver on meaningful results, to create. As an industry, we are data rich and information poor, and our client’s operations are needing to evolve quickly to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Innovation is what will push us forward, but it doesn’t always have to be in one giant leap. Innovation can take many small steps along the way often in simply a different direction. We, as an industry, need to help logistics operations find the wisdom and insights in the data.

I’m describing this as I attend the RILA (Retail Industry Leaders Association) conference. The retail landscape is transforming where e-commerce, store retail, store fulfillment, and BOPUS (buy online pick up in store) are now becoming singularly focused as simply commerce with little to no distinction. To keep pace with the many shifts in retail, materials handling must continually innovate. There’s heavy pressure to improve what happens in the DC as well as in logistics and the overall supply chain.

It’s important to realize that this is not just about building a better, smarter conveyor. It’s about creating a new operating system by looking at alternatives to how things run today. You need to build software from the bottom up to take advantage of the data, processes and equipment allowing for the unlocking meaningful operational potential. System integration innovation is all about putting all the pieces together differently to create a perfect patchwork quilt that anticipates problems, corrects them even before they occur, and ultimately delights the customer. We must continually create ecosystems that deliver meaningful improvements and results for all.

Mark Wheeler, director of Supply Chain Solutions, Zebra

You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball and drive toward value while being open to change to be innovative today. For technology-driven change, we’re in a particularly dynamic time that will challenge everyone in the supply chain. They will question their practices and the tools used to run them. Systems of reality that sense the physical world and provide a true real-time visibility will power much of this transformation.

Getting there requires collaboration across the supply chain, observing current practices and jointly innovating to create new tools to improve operations. Traditionally, various systems have offered glimpses into the location or condition of an item. New systems will increasingly sense the environment more directly and completely.

Such innovation will bring with it greater visibility that will allow new levels of optimization and keen operational insights. Machine learning, in particular, will significantly improve overall performance. This new level of operational visibility will enable execution systems that can adapt to operations that are constantly in a state of change.