Minds and Machines

In today’s world the word “innovation” is loaded with positive meaning. Everyone likes it. Everyone thinks it’s important. But does everyone know what it really means?

Looking back at a lot of discussions I had with other people about innovation, my feeling is: well, probably not. Many people seem to believe that it is something that simply happens. And after it happened, you can just use it like a product and make it work for you. When those people want to become innovative themselves, they often have to face a truth which doesn’t really correspond to the positive meaning of innovation they had in mind. It looks like innovation has more than a single face.

What innovation really is, I don’t know either. So I’m not going to give you another definition for innovation. Instead, I’d like to list seven different faces I learned effective innovation has, and what they mean for someone wanting to become innovative. Be aware: this probably causes your positive feeling about innovation to fade away.

1. Innovation is creativity.

Some people use the words “innovation” and “creativity” interchangeably. But creativity is only a very small part of innovation – a tiny part which attracts way too much attention. For sure, you need a good idea to start with. But compared to the other aspects of innovation I talk about below, believe me, this is the simplest part of the whole thing.

Coming up with an idea is much simpler than bringing it to life.

2. Innovation is change.

Innovation is about the new. It is about the different. It is about change. While nearly everyone thinks of innovation as something very positive, most people consider change as something very threatening.

You can waste a lot of time wondering why logical arguments don’t convince your audience to change something. Logic won’t help you much. People fear change. Fear is emotional. You better become an evangelist than stay a mathematician.

People like the results of innovation. Unfortunately they hate the process to get there.

3. Innovation is destruction.

Innovation is not just something new. Innovation replaces something existing. It is disruptive. Of course, you could just modify the status quo in small bits and pieces. And in fact, this might indeed be a very good idea. If you know how to get better with only minor changes – great, go for it! But don’t confuse this with innovation. This is called optimization.

Optimization is a difference in degree. Innovation is a difference in kind.

4. Innovation is speed.

For effective innovation, it isn’t sufficient to be fast. You want to be first. This means, you have to do a lot of things a lot faster than your competition. And this means you have to decide faster. As with every decision, there are surprises ahead. So better be flexible. Don’t waste your time on planning. You’re going to change plans anyway. Act! Not when the plan is finished. Now.

If you’re going somewhere, no one else has been before, don’t expect a map guiding your way. If you’re first, it might be dark, it might be dangerous and you might get stuck. And it’s up to you to draw the map.

If you don’t want to follow your competition, lead them.

5. Innovation is emergence.

If a company has an R&D department – good. But that alone doesn’t make a company innovative. There’s more to innovation than some people responsible for “doing” it. All parts of the whole are important. But the interactions between the parts are even more important. Make sure your communication works and the right people are linked to each other. You need a culture that favors good ideas to make them happen.

Innovation can’t be created or produced. It has to emerge from the complex system of interacting parts a company is made of.

You can’t control the emergence of innovation. You can only influence it.

6. Innovation is freedom.

Any kind of constraint reduces the possibility of innovation to emerge. You need an environment free of constraints, free of restrictions, free of rules. Chances are, the environment you currently exist in looks more like the opposite: plenty of constraints, restrictions, rules.

There are two types of rules:

1. Authority-imposed rules the environment sets up for you.
2. Self-imposed rules you set up yourself.

Innovation is about breaking both of them.

Some people say, some rules can’t be broken. Laws of nature for example. Well, if breaking them doesn’t work, you can still try bending or bypassing them. It is your responsibility to know where you want your authority to end.

For a creative mind, there are no limits.

7. Innovation is risk.

Dealing with innovation is dealing with uncertainty. Uncertainty bears risk. Let me make this one absolutely clear: risk means you can be wrong. You can lose money, your reputation, your authority, or even worse. If this worst case scenario scares you, remember that the best case scenario is as likely to become true. It is even more likely to become true, as you hopefully know what you’re doing. Finally, you’re going to end up somewhere in between anyway.

A good strategy to reduce risk is spreading risk on multiple projects. But this will also reduce your speed, as you’re no longer focused. You should also expect some (or even better: most) of these projects to collapse. Learn to live with that fear. Failure is a part of the game. Failure is not evil.

The worst thing that can happen to you if you fail probably is that you learn something.

Conclusion.

Innovation does not simply happen. Innovation has high demands for its environment. If you want innovation to emerge, you’re going to have a tough job making sure that the environment meets those requirements.

Although this is hard, the results of innovation nearly always are worth the effort. It’s just not as simple as it looks like initially.

If you still have this positive feeling about innovation after reading this, go ahead and change the world! And if you’re done, please tell me if these insights have been helpful in any way.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 21:33 and is filed under Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.