Finding alternatives to innovate when resources are limited

We have a people challenge– we are a private equity owned company, currently in a hiring freeze and have some open positions that haven’t been back-filled. At the same time, we need to innovate. I can think of many acquisitions of smaller technologies that would make our product better, but they are too small to drive immediate revenue gains. We can’t “code our way to innovation” without developer resources and we can’t work 24 hours a day. My challenge is to either persuade leadership to make small acquisitions, narrow our focus, or consider alternative solutions. What are other companies doing to continue innovating under resource constraints? There are 6 spots open in this challenge forum. If you would like to attend, please email cori@outthinker.com