1. Ignorance

Most of the really good ideas never catch up because we’re so busy living with our good old habits. Of course, we don’t have enough time to track all the things happening around us. But you can raise the chance to identify possible innovations very early with this simple approach:

• When you first hear about something new, write it on a list and don’t bother any longer.
• If you hear about it for the second time, mark the item in your list and don’t bother any longer.
• If you hear about it for the third time, find out everything about it you possibly can.

2. Insanity

Good ideas are interesting. Great ideas are insane. Many of the things we’re used to today, like calling someone with a cellphone or flying in a plane across the ocean, originated in someone’s mind at a time when they got a lot of laughs about their insanity to believe in such ridiculous things.
When you feel like laughing at an idea you just hear about, don’t put it in the list above. Find out about it immediately!

3. Hate

For most people this is the turning point. Here you’re going to decide whether you start to accept the new, or if you’re going to fight it (see below).
If you are aware of your anger forming (which leads to hate, which in turn leads to suffering; thank you, Yoda), use this awareness to make a wise decision for the next steps.

4. Aggression

If you’re actively fighting an innovation, you better have really good reasons. You cannot stop progress. With a lot of energy (that means: half a nation measured in people, or half a world measured in governments), you might be able to delay it. But someone, somewhere will always be curious enough to try out what you’d like to avert.
Keep in mind that innovations are neither good nor bad. It always depends on how people deal with it. Better focus on how to live with the changes. Or invent something even better that satisfies the advocates and you. But never waste your time to fight a war you cannot win.

5. Defeat

It should be quite obvious if you reach this state. Believe me, it’s not that obvious. Some people never accept their defeat, just because they don’t realize it.
With the help of this list, you should be well prepared to not reach this state.

For innovators this list also holds a valuable truth: keep up!
As Ghandi said:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

If you don’t change, the world around you still changes. Nothing will stay forever.
After all, that’s what makes life interesting.

I picked the following seven presentations because they all have style. All of the presenters do an incredibly good job of getting their message across. After you’ve watched all these presentations, you’ll have learned a lot about topics that are important for innovation. And you’ll also get a feeling how to give great presentations. So if you have some time, get some popcorn, grab a beer and have fun! I promise you, you won’t be bored.

1. Guy Kawasaki: The Art of the Start (TiECon 2006)

If you want to change the world, Guy tells you how to start. His presentation structure is as simple and effective as his slides are. Perfect combination of lots of information flavoured with the right amount of humor. (40 minutes)

2. Malcolm Gladwell: Spaghetti Sauce (TED 2004)

Creating a great product means understanding the customer. Malcolm tells you that this might be harder than you think – with tomatoe sauce. He uses no slides. And you won’t miss a single one. (20 minutes)

3. Seth Godin: Marketing (Google 2006)

A great product needs great marketing. Seth explains how great marketing works. (50 minutes)

4. Steve Jobs: Status Report (MacWorld 1997)

Steve is the incarnation of an innovator. See him setting the stage for Apple’s comeback in this presentation. (40 minutes)

5. Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture (Open Source Conference 2002)

We can only be innovative, if the rules around us are properly set up. Listen to Lawrence how we systematically destroy our freedom to innovate. He’s known for his slides, which are “reduced to the max”. (30 minutes)

6. Sir Ken Robinson: Educational Creativity (TED 2006)

Ken tells us what’s wrong with the educational system and what needs to be changed to encourage creativity. In an incredibly funny way. (20 minutes)

7. Dick Hardt: Identity 2.0 (OSCON 2005)

Although this topic is not directly related to innovation, Dick’s presentation style alone is innovative enough to list him here. (15 minutes)

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.