It sounds solid, desirable, commendable, intellectual, and maybe even a little bit sexy.
But what does it mean and how do we achieve it?
We hear about innovative ideas, innovative people, innovative discoveries, innovative inventions, innovative applications, innovative companies, innovative products, and we hear about innovation. It all sounds wonderful, but do 7 adjective uses and 1 noun help us get on the same page?
I’m afraid not.
Innovation, as used today, is mostly a buzzword. It is jargon. It’s used as an empty filler word.
It’s used as an adjective to provide a slick attribute to some process, thing or idea.
A Wall Street Journal article(1) made a case that the word “Innovation” had outlived its usefulness and was in danger of becoming a cliché. Strong arguments can be made that the word has become puffery used to mask ordinary progress as monumental change.
Asked to define innovation, many people stumble or just provide a circular argument.
Classic symptoms of jargon monoxide poisoning.
Governments spend billions on research, development, companies, and commercialization activities under the banner of innovation. They have created innovation policies, innovation strategies, departments of innovation, and many innovation programs offering attractive grants. They implore us to use these tools to be more innovative, to grow the economy, to create jobs, and build a prosperous nation.
(1) http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304791704577418250902309914 “You Call That Innovation? Companies Love to Say They Innovate, but the Term Has Begun to Lose Meaning.” Accessed: Feb. 18, 2018.
The message is that innovation is key.
….but if people struggle just to define the term, then what is innovation and how do you know you’ve achieved it?
Several years ago, a government official in an innovation role lamented to me that for all the money they had spent, they didn’t get what they wanted in return. Asked what it was they wanted, he paused then replied: “no one has ever asked me that question”.
Many are as perplexed about innovation as that government official was (but don’t admit it as freely as he did). The multitude of uses of the word innovation brings confusion rather than clarity.
The lack of clarity hamstrings scientists, inventors, managers, and entrepreneurs. They say: “We are developing a product; thus we were innovating!”
That may not be correct. They may be inventing and developing but might not be creating an innovation.
The fundamental differences between an invention and an innovation is how the end user perceives the utility of the invention. How well it performs the job for the end user, and whether the customer will buy the product.
I use this as my guiding definition of innovation.
“An innovation is a product or service that meets a users’ needs where users’ adoption of the product can be measured in economic terms.”
Invention and development are part of creating an innovation. But it becomes an innovation only when it satisfies a need and the end user adopts it.
For now, let’s recognize that if no one wants or doesn’t buy what is developed, then it may be an invention, but it is not an innovation.
References:
The #1 mistake that kills new products and the companies developing them is creating a product or service that no one wants.
It may be a most elegant invention but if it doesn’t do the job the end user needs and is willing to pay for, then the product and company are dead.
A product is built, but no one wants it.
The end user is key!
Peter Drucker is the godfather guru of the philosophical & practical foundations and behaviours of the modern business and effective management. Dr. Drucker passed away in 2005. His is the first book to present innovation and entrepreneurship as a purposeful, systematic discipline, and set of behaviours that can be learned and practiced. If you haven’t encountered his work, this is book an excellent place to start.
Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, philosophy, culture, business and many other subjects. He taught creative thinking at the University of Washington and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and on National Public Radio. In 2008 he received the Jolt Award for Productivity Winner for his book “The Myths of Innovation”.
Curt Carlson was president and CEO of SRI (Stanford Research International) from 1998 to 2014. William Wilmot was the director of the Collaboration Institute, a group specializing in workplace collaboration and communication. SRI has given the world a steady stream of innovations including the computer mouse, ARPANET (forerunner of the Internet), telerobotic surgery (Da Vinci surgical robot, natural language speech recognition (Nuance & Siri), just to name a few.