The essentials of innovation
In today's fast-changing environment innovation is at the heart of adding value to products and services, stimulating sales growth, and exploiting new markets. It is the art of making new connections, and continuously challenging the status quo - without changing things just for the sake of change.
Innovation is commonly described as 'the commercially successful exploitation of ideas.' This definition associates innovation with a tangible outcome. However, in today's fast-changing environment this is not enough. Innovation is the art of making new connections, and continuously challenging the status quo - without changing things for change's sake. Hence, innovation can also be defined as a frame of mind.
Successful innovation is first, and most importantly, about creating value. It does so either by improving existing goods, processes or services (incremental innovation), or by developing goods, processes or services of value that have not existed previously (radical innovation). However, both kinds of innovation require you to do the following:
- Challenge the status quo
- Have an understanding of and insights into consumer needs
- Develop imaginative and novel solutions.
In addition, innovation is generally associated with the following:
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The willingness to take risk
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Accepting high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty
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Original thinking
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A passion to drive the idea through to conclusions
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The ability to inspire passion in others.
Design is about doing things consciously, and not because they have always been done in a certain way. It is about comparing alternatives to select the best possible solution. It is about exploring and experimenting. A more official definition might read:
'Design is the conscious decision making process by which information (an idea) is transformed into an outcome, be it tangible (product) or intangible (service).'
Designers are frequently considered to:
- Be tolerant of ambiguity
- Perceive the world differently
- See possibilities
- Ask questions
- Be divergent thinkers
- Want to change the status quo
- Be happy to take risk.
Ultimately, the requirements for successful innovation dovetail neatly with design practices and design thinking.
This does not mean that innovation should be left to the designers, but clearly indicates that designers have an important contribution to make to the innovation process. As the UK Government White Paper on Competitiveness (1995) states:
'The effective use of design is fundamental to the creation of innovative products, processes and services. Good design can significantly add value to products, lead to growth in sales and enable both the exploitation of new markets and the consolidation of existing ones.'
However, even though the link between the skills and abilities of designers and the skills and abilities required for innovation seem quite obvious, many organisations still do not exploit the skills of designers in order to innovate.
But it should be pointed out that what is becoming known as 'design thinking' is essential to innovation - perhaps even more so than designers themselves. Design thinking is based on consumer focus, early visualisation and experimentation, all of which are key to innovation.
Most of the efforts to promote design and its contribution to innovation are coming from the design community, rather than the business and innovation community.
Both innovation and design require cross-disciplinary co-ordination - but universities and business schools tend to operate strictly within departmental boundaries. Very few business schools have a department of innovation or design, and as a consequence both disciplines are being treated and taught in a very fragmented fashion to business people - if they are taught at all.
Furthermore, many people think of 'product', ie the end result, when talking about design and innovation. However, innovation can usefully be viewed as being more about a certain frame of mind rather than a tangible product or a new technology. An innovative mindset will seek to improve and change in order to increase value - be it a process, a product, or a business model. In an innovative organisation, innovation will not be the domain of a department or small group of people, but the responsibility of everyone, and design will be a key facilitator, embedded into the organisation's culture.