I recently attended an AMAKC event where Pat McGauley presented how Anheuser-Busch created the Lime-A-Rita family of flavored beers and built them into a billion dollar brand. The culture of innovation at Anheuser-Busch was vital to the success of the Lime-A-Rita brand.

Here are a few words of advice from Pat McGauley on building a culture of innovation:

• Before you start innovating or renovating, you need to have a strategy in place.
• If you work at it you’ll learn more from what you screw up at than what you succeed at.
• When a product is to fix a company problem, not a consumer one, it doesn’t usually work.
• Learn from previous failures.
• Invest before you need it – take risks!
• Renew interest by being unexpected.
• Scale up quickly once you’ve got a winner.

Retailers should foster a culture of innovation with their employees if they want their brand to flourish in today’s competitive marketplace. Businesses that fail to innovate may risk losing ground to competitors, losing key staff, or operating inefficiently. People who want to innovate have different characteristics; they want to create, make, provoke, and challenge. Hiring employees who strive to innovate will help your brand stay on the cutting edge.