Aug 7, 2006
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What Is Innovation?
Scott Berkun has an interesting survey on his blog. He is researching innovation for a new book. I found his survery thought provoking . Hope he doesn’t mind me springboarding off it (for those interested in the original, check it out here.
To me, innovation is about solving a problem when existing solutions don’t cut it anymore. Underpinning this definition is a belief that there are very few “new” problems (if any), just obsolete solutions. Technical accomplishments and new research are like getting pieces of a puzzle to fit together how we want them to. We didn’t build the puzzle (nobody asked us how the laws of nature should work) but are trying to get new shapes or designs from it.
What drives innovation? Or, in other words, why wouldn’t an existing solution cut it anymore? I think dissatisfaction is at the core of innovation. Somebody or a group of people, isn’t happy with the ways things work. So they try to figure out another way to make things work. The exact way they solve the problem itself isn’t necessarily the innovation. The solution could be made up of existing methods, processes or technologies. But the innovation is in the application of those methods, the fact that it solves a problem and takes away the dissatisfaction.
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