Innovation, The Intro and Beginning.
Collaborative innovation is not something new, but for many small businesses out there it is not something that is used to drive the business to new frontiers of success. First though, we should probably define what innovation is, how it works and what its benefits are. For many companies, innovation is the commercialization of creativity; for others, it's the freedom of play. Innovation is the ability and freedom to allow for creativity to be unlocked allowing for problems to be solved. It should also be noted that innovation differs from invention in that invention is usually the result of innovation practice and a result of the final output of the innovation task at hand.
Innovation encompasses many different things, whether that be products (both physical and service based), processes, interactions with people or things, changes in beliefs, even things as simple as deciding on a quicker way home to spend more time with family. Innovation can be boiled down to how can we make things better, easier, faster and finding a way to implement it. Maybe you found a way to shave a few minutes off your morning routine by setting up your makeup in such a way that it now has a flow or process and you have reduces the number of steps to apply it. Maybe you learned different shortcut keys in your photoshop process to reduce how long it takes to physically click on item. The point is, you are not like all the others in line the the image to the left. you are a different color, something different. Regardless, if you have found a way to improve the way you work, you know what innovation is. The key is learning how to scale that up and finding ways to make innovations impact not only yourself, but others, and ideally the world.
One of the biggest and often hardest parts of innovation and its process is the reason. Finding a reason to innovate can be difficult as there is a strong culture that fosters the idea of " if it aint broke dont fix it", unfortunately when it comes to business and growth, this mentality does not work. For innovation to work, there needs to be a purpose and a reason for innovation to occur. There are so many ways to all of our jobs, but why should we choose to try to make it better, or why should we decide to invest time and money to change our product if it is working just fine right now? Unfortunately the reason is because this is how our society works. We have been finely tuned by other innovators to continuously want the newest, greatest and most ground breaking new products and services, which is unfortunate because this causes us to loose sight of major advances. There is a balance though, which is very important, whether to spend time, wasting money on over developing a product or service, or save money and releasing a great idea and letting the market tell you how to innovate.
There are many times when a highly innovative product becomes available to the public where the developers had to make a choice of performance and over development with too many features, but sometimes those extra features are what drives the sale. The term innovation can be almost synonymous with the word evolution. Evolution is often determined by environment, whether it is a bird changing its mating rituals to attract more mates, or humans developing an app in which they can swipe left or right depending upon the attraction they feel towards a persons photo. Innovation boils down to the want and need to change internally as a person. If you know that something can be better, you are an innovator. If you feel that a process you deal with can be more efficient, you are an innovator. If you dream about an idea workplace, or a product that you know people will want, you are definitely an innovator!
As this is my first blog post, i hope you return as i will be building upon this greatly. My goal is to help and motivate you, and develop your innovation skills is many aspects. I plan to touch subjects such as changing work dynamics, innovation in the home, driving ideas through to people you may see as roadblocks etc.
Stay Creative, Make Something!
Ian
