Innovation

What is so special about Innovation?

Everyone "innovates" something or the other every day. Imagine an organization with 100,000 employees. If each of the employees "innovated" (if there was such a word) one thing every day there would be 100,000 innovations per work day. Employees innovate a new shortcut to open a program on their computer, they innovate a new process to pay the vendors on time, innovate a new process to manufacture their products and so on and on. These things happen every working day.

Then what is so special about innovation that companies feel the need to devote special departments to "innovate"?

They want to be able to answer the question - "What Next"? In order to enable the quest for that answer they, go on an innovation spree forgetting that there are simple things that can be leveraged and turned into killer-products or cash-cows. Take Apple Computer (as it was formerly called) - they did not completely innovate the iPOD - they leveraged an existing product and innovated a few changes and turned it into a cash-cow for the company.

The main issue with "Innovation" is that companies usually want to stick to their area of competency and want to be able to successful in their innovations. However, what happens is that over a period of time, every industry reaches a level of maturity and therefore the "killer innovative product" becomes a distant dream.

On the other hand, there are companies like 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) that have moved from their core competency to "stickies". Nokia is another example of a company that has travelled a long long way from lumber to cellphone leader. How did they do it? The did it because they took small innovations which were outside their core expertise and turned them around into world changing products.

So, would you rather attend a session on "How to Innovate" or use your existing little innovation to change the world...think about it !