There is no such thing as Innovation
Everywhere I turn these days it seems that companies are tripping over themselves in an effort to become more "innovative". As buzzwords go, innovation is probably not the worst one I have ever heard. As well, I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that innovation is a good thing. As most CEOs have known forever, innovation can be the road to sustainable competitive advantage, market share growth, increased shareholder value and many other important corporate goals.
There is just one problem - there is no such thing as innovation. We have all heard the jokes about the highly enlightened management teams that put their smartest people in a room and instruct them to "Innovate!". This seems to me about as likely to succeed as putting an appointment in your PDA that reminds you on Thursday morning at 11:30am to be spontaneous.
Perhaps innovation is like a mosquito bite. You usually only recognize it after it has happened. It is only as a solution becomes more accepted and can be positioned apart from its competition that we can judge it as innovative. To paraphrase John Lennon, innovation is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. For example, many people believe that great innovations in consumer products like making Ivory Soap float came about my accident.
While I am not convinced that there is such a thing as a recipe for innovation, I believe we cannot go far wrong of we focus on understanding the problem our customers and prospects are trying to solve. We need to keep standing in their shoes even as we attempt to view their problems standing on our heads, with our eyes closed and our hands tied behind our backs. If nothing else I think there are some fundamental questions we need to be asking:
• What exactly is it you are trying to achieve?
• How painful is it for you to be unable to achieve this goal?
• How have you solved this problem in the past?
• How are others solving this problem?
• If I gave you a magic wand and let you build the perfect solution what would it look like?
• Is there any reason why this solution could not be built?
Oh yeah, one more question - how do all of you incorporate innovation and innovative thinking into your product planning? I would love to hear your tips, tricks, trials and tribulations.
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Comments (5)
You had to know this was coming... Innovation does exist. Innovation is simply solving a problem. The recipe for successful innovation is doing it cheaper, faster and better than the solution before.
Innovation does exist and people do it everyday.
Posted by Stewart Rogers | July 9, 2007 8:46 AM
Tom Peters says
True innovation is not a cool idea. true innovation is instead what we learn when we observe what goes down when we actually test a potentially cool idea. The Big-Big idea: We can't innovate until we have something tangible to play with.
Posted by Dave Petersen | January 15, 2008 10:48 AM
Interesting, Dave.
Posted by Stewart Rogers | January 15, 2008 12:32 PM
There is no innovation, only evolution.
Look at the car, an evolution that stems back all the way to the wheel which was an evolution from naturally occuring boulders and logs rolling along the ground.
I think Joe Public assumes that innovation is this miraculous amazing thing when in reality it is no different than the next peppermint flavoured toothpaste that comes out.
Another example is the Z9 bluetooth headset. Apparently it comes with a clip so you can hook it on your tie/shirt when not using it. Innovative?? I dont think so, but their advertisements states "Innovative metallic tie clip...".
Maybe we should start using the word "useful" in place of "innovative". It will probably be more apt.
Posted by John McCormak | May 28, 2008 6:13 PM
Interesting, John. When I looked up the definition of innovation it is defined as the act of introducing something new. While evolution is a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse state to a higher, more complex, or better state. The magic comes in the research to determine the change to achieve the higher, more complex, or better state. This leads to innovation which results in evolution.
Posted by Stewart Rogers | May 30, 2008 4:31 PM