A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open to new ideas. Thinking about improving the adaptation of your small business innovation to the changing elements around you? You have a large business innovation continuum that you should consider.
Where is your focus? Invention? Innovation? Creativity? Or maybe somewhere else on the continuum of winning new business?
We are always surprised by the number of people that don’t make a distinction between these concepts. Do you make the distinction?
A clear distinction and your appropriate action focus will definitely make a difference to your business. Let’s us explain why.
Creativity is your ability to imagine new concepts. It does not require value creation. That is why when we run brainstorming sessions; we do not allow concepts to be screened for merit. We are being divergent and looking for all possible ideas.
Creativity plays an important role in both invention and innovation but is only the front-end component of each.
Invention and innovation. They have been so thoroughly misused that it is hard to tell the difference between them. Yet they could not be more different.
Related: Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Innovation is the process through which value is created and delivered to a community in the form of a new solution. We have purposely chosen to frame the definition as a process. It can also be used to describe a new product or service … the output of the process.
In either case, the key elements of the meaning are value delivery and newness.
The invention is very distinct from innovation. When a new idea surfaces or a new patent is filed, that is an invention.
It is the classic eureka moment when a person has an idea for a better mousetrap and sets about creating it, putting off concern about who will buy it for another day.
Business model innovation is a source of competitive advantage that few companies proactively pursue. It, however, is not necessary to entirely replace a business model or radically reinvent the business in order to capture value from innovation.
Business activity can be viewed as a continuum from incremental improvement to the invention of an entirely new business Between these extremes are three additional levels of innovation, distinguished by the degree to which they redefine the existing business model.
Looking for better incremental improvement?
Incremental improvement
Focuses on re-engineering the existing business model—doing what we already do, only better, faster, or cheaper.
Although important to the ongoing success of the business, these efforts create fewer consumer and competitive benefits than innovative activities, and they have little to no disruptive effect on the market.
Small business innovation … single-dimension
This represents a pioneering change in any existing business model. It is designed to deliver substantially enhanced consumer benefits and financial performance.
This level of innovation causes some degree of disturbance in the market (for example Amazon’s e-commerce process innovations).
Serial innovation
Serial innovationbuilds on the success of initial business innovation by expanding the scope of what is considered for future innovation.
Through the continuous adaptation of the business model, the company harvests progressively more of the benefit of the original innovation (e.g., the expansion of Amazon’s move from books and music to other products and services).
Business innovation models … multi-dimension innovation
Multi-dimensional innovationcreates a substantially new way of doing business in order to optimize the market opportunity.
Innovation at this level is essentially building something completely new from scratch. It affects change in multiple components of the business model simultaneously.
Business model innovation often propels a company beyond the boundaries of its original marketplace through the offer of products and services previously unavailable to customers.
It typically requires new processes, organizational structures, and distribution channels. Business model innovation disrupts existing patterns of consumption and competition (for example, Dell’s direct-to-consumer customer-selected design business model).
Business inventionrefers to a revolutionary change or strategic breakthroughs that create entirely new businesses.
Such inventions represent “white space” in the market. They transcend customer desires by serving needs and wants that have not yet been articulated.
They change the basis of competition by creating value where none existed before (for example, Apple’s pioneering the iPhone).
The greater the degree of innovation (i.e., the farther right on the continuum), the greater the competitive disruptions and the higher the potential rewards for consumers and stakeholders.
For most companies, however, applying innovative thinking to the company’s entire business model is too difficult to conceive, too risky to undertake, and too hard to implement on a recurring basis.
Innovations that truly revolutionize an industry come along only about once a decade.
Most of us, therefore, primarily focus on those business application innovations that provide customer benefits based on the company’s existing competitive advantages.
These innovations do not require recreating the wheel or predicting the future. They do require a genuine focus on the customer and a commitment to more effectively meeting customer requirements.
Here are the key assumptions we use in characterizing business application innovations:
Business innovation examples … innovations are driven by the market
As we have discussed, shifts in demographics, social, economic, and/or technological conditionsoften precede or accompany innovation in an industry.
True innovation represents an advance for consumers
Great business innovators improve the quality of life for their customers. As a result, they also have an impact on competitors and the structure and performance of the whole industry.
For example, “category killers” and supercenters forever changed consumers’ expectations about selection and price and as a result, shopping behavior and store preferences.
Inventors often aren’t the winners
An innovative idea doesn’t necessarily have to originate with you. Often, it is a new application of an existing idea.
As the above retail innovation examples illustrate, inventors often aren’t the winners in the end. Innovation often means being a fast followerrather than the originator of a new way of doing business.
Walmart’s supercenter format was not an original idea—the basic concept had been operating successfully for 25 years in Europe.
But it represented an innovation for Walmart as used in the context of its own business and its own market. Innovators teach us that to succeed we don’t need genius as much as curiosity and determination.
All strategies eventually run out of gas
In an environment characterized by frequent and significant shifts in resource and consumption markets, just doing better than what you do today is not enough.
A focus on matching and beating your rival results in strategies that are all too similar and competition that is based on incremental improvements rather than breakthrough ideas.
Competing head-to-head is intense.
The bottom line
Innovative companies break from the competitive pack by staking out fundamentally new market space.
Successful innovation can expand the market, build new markets, as well as increase market share for the innovator.
Continuous business innovation is the key not only to value creation for consumers but also to wealth creation for stakeholders and the true long-term success of the firm.
What about your abilities to innovate to shape your future? What position on the innovation continuum do you use? What key experiences can you share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add below?
Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of a business. Find him on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks
Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision
Our agency focuses on creativity and innovation. From time to time we post interesting tidbits on creative thinking in general. But our real attention is the process of creating more business innovation examples from idea combination.
An
idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.
– James Webb Young
Here are some great
innovation examples to stimulate thinking on this subject.
As background, our
perspective on creativity and innovation is very simple. It is not about
invention. Rather it is about collecting and connecting dots — bringing
together two (or more) ideas to create an altogether new idea.
We live in the age of digital disruption, a time when businesses are challenged to adapt to significant transformation or die. That’s not an exaggeration in an era where many brands are both materializing and disappearing daily.
Technology is
advancing faster than the new applications for it, and our competitors are
innovating also at a rapid rate. So the need for new ideas and innovation is
very intense, as survival depends on it.
Related: Does a Paradox on Innovation Design and Creativity Exist in
Business?
We often think of
innovation as inventing new things, but we may be smarter to think of it as
recombining old ones. The truth is that important breakthroughs usually come
from combining ideas from different domains. Often very different,
sometimes weird ideas.
A recent example is the Apple ecosystem. There were plenty of digital music players around when Steve Jobs and Apple launched the iPod. Note he also combined his player with iTunes, which made the content both more accessible and palatable to music companies. He then threw new products into the mix – the i-Phone, i-Pad and now Siri – creating more combinations and even greater value.
Marrying ideas has
been around for ages, quite literally. One of the greatest inventions of all?
One contender is Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. Before Gutenberg, all
books had been copied by hand or stamped out with woodblocks.
Around 1450 in
Strasbourg, Gutenberg combined two ideas to invent printing with moveable type.
He coupled the flexibility of a coin punch with the power of a wine press. His
invention enabled the production of books and the spread of knowledge and ideas
throughout the Western World.
The secret to problem
solving and innovation is curiosity. You generate lots of ideas to find the
best of the best. By generating ideas you start by asking lots of questions. By
being curious. By thinking widely and not discarding ideas too soon. By
convergent thinking. All of which help us to better understand and define the
changes we are looking for.
Are you looking for
ways of generating more innovative ideas by combining 2 or more different
ideas? Consider these areas to stimulate your thinking:
Changing business models
Business models are
often neglected when considering new ideas for your business. They shouldn’t
be. One of the best examples of an innovative business model is from Safelite
Auto Glass. What’s innovative here you may be thinking? It’s simple. An auto
glass repair business that comes to you for your repair. Saving you time and
convenience. A value proposition and business model that is hard to top.
Another good example is eBay, reflecting a new model and application of supply, demand, and sales.
Partnerships
Nearly every new idea is a synthesis of other ideas. So a great way to generate ideas is to force combinational possibilities from collaboration and partnerships with other people of diverse professions and skills.
Partnerships
Get a diverse team together and brainstorm how you could mix and combine existing and new ideas together. Combine products with those from wildly different sources.
Combine products and services
This is an easy one to think about. Picture the smartphone product and then envision all the services this product provides by the millions of apps that the smartphone can provide. Absolutely mind-boggling, isn’t it?
Multi-use
Can you come up with new product ideas that have multiple uses? It doesn’t have to be complex. For example imagine a drill, with bits for multiple uses, such as a drill, sander, cleaner, screwdriver, etc.
Adding function to packaging
A simple example of
this is the use of milk cartons to display missing persons’ picture and
description details. Can you imagine a better place to get this kind of
attention?
Extra function
What do you get when you combine a camcorder with an iPod? A digital camcorder that uses a hard drive rather than tape. Up to 7 hours of video on one hard drive. Plus you can do simple edits on the camera – like deleted scenes, even if they are in the middle of your “tape.”
You can set up playlists (like on the iPod). Plus downloading to your computer is as simple as using iTunes. No need for the tape, which slows data transfer significantly.
Dual function
This combination is a little more difficult to imagine. But this really only means there is more upside in this area, yes? Couple of wild dual-function products we would use as examples here.
The
first one is an inflatable sleeping coat that doubles as a sleeping bag. It
makes camping in the great outdoors a little more convenient.
A
second example is a jet ski that converts to a dune buggy with the simple push
of a button.
Make it work differently
Take a product and think of an absurd way to make it work. For example, in the developing world batteries are expensive and electricity is unreliable. Imagine a reliable radio that people could wind up by hand.
It exists and has transformed the availability of information in many of the poorest regions of the Earth. Think of what you would get combining a suitcase with a trolley? Simple, a suitcase on rollers. Another example? Combine a bell and a clock to derive an alarm clock.
Weird combinations
Combine products with
those from wildly different sources. Take it to the extreme. The more bizarre
the combination the more original the ideas that are triggered. An example is
the combination of a bridge and canal overpass for boats and walkers.
The bottom line
In your business (or
life) how can you combine two ideas together to create something new? Stuck for
ideas? Read magazines and rip out pictures or words that you find interesting.
This is a great source of new ideas. Force yourself to make combinations.
In doing this, you
may get an idea for a new product, a new service, or a new career.
Our message for
businesses is simple. Think more like an innovator. Learn the innovation
process. Spend time at the front end on what the marketplace needs, rather than
trying to build a slick marketing campaign selling your invention. That is the
best way to success.
Innovation isn’t about talking, it’s about doing. The action. So get moving and begin your journey from an accidental innovator to a high-performance innovation business leader.
Like anything else, fostering creative business ideas require practice. And distinguishing between creativity, invention, and innovation. So exercise and practice this skill and utilize it in as many areas of your business as you can.
The truth is that innovation is never a single event. It requires the discovery of new insights, the engineering of solutions around those insights, and then the transformation of an industry or field. Technology does not produce progress by itself, we need to find important problems for it to solve and then must change how we work in order to take advantage of it.
So while smartphone apps are cool and add convenience to our lives, the real impact of digital technology lies in front of us, when second-order technologies are applied to completely new problems.
Why not try it with
your own products to drive innovation in your business?
So what’s the conclusion? The
conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that
next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your business innovation process and efforts. Lessons are all around you. In some cases, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. Or collaborating with you. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?
Do you have a lesson
about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any
questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the
founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing
and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on
topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him
on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
More reading on
creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Studying Innovative Change for Creative
Business Ideas
Use These Tools to Excel at Effective
Collaboration
Our agency focuses on creativity and innovation. From time to time we post interesting tidbits on creative thinking in general. But our real attention is the process of creating more innovation from idea combination. Here are some great corporate innovation examples to stimulate thinking on this subject.
As background, our perspective on creativity and innovation is very simple. It is not about invention. Rather it is about collecting and connecting dots — bringing together two (or more) ideas to create an altogether new idea.
It often seems easy to know when the next big thing is upon us. Someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk stands on stage and tells us what is being launched next. The business press gets excited, pundits swoon and a thousand imitators are created. Before long an ecosystem develops and the world is forever changed.
In reality, though, things are much murkier than that. Innovation is a process of discovery, engineering, and transformation and it is only the last part that is visible to most of us. The seeds of a revolution started long before, in obscure labs and at conferences with high priests presenting papers written in arcane vernacular.
Since the 1950s, the engine that’s driven new knowledge to, as Vannevar Bush put it, “turn the wheels of private and public enterprise,” has been the US government. Unfortunately, moving new discoveries out of federal labs has often been a slow and cumbersome process, but a new model holds promise for greatly accelerating breakthrough innovation.
We live in the age of digital disruption, a time when businesses are challenged to adapt to significant transformation or die.
That’s not an exaggeration in an era where many brands are both materializing and disappearing daily.
Technology is advancing faster than the new applications for it, and our competitors are innovating also at a rapid rate.
So the need for new ideas and innovation is very intense, as survival depends on it.
Related: Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
We often think of innovation as inventing new things, but we may be smarter to think of it as recombining old ones.
The truth is that important breakthroughs usually come from combining ideas from different domains. Often very different, sometimes weird ideas.
Some examples
A recent example is the Apple ecosystem. There were plenty of digital music players around when Steve Jobs and Apple launched the iPod.
Note he also combined his player with iTunes, which made content both more accessible and palatable to music companies. He then threw new products into the mix – the iPhone, iPad and now Siri – creating more combinations and even greater value.
Marrying ideas has been around for ages, quite literally. One of the greatest inventions of all? One contender is Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. Before Gutenberg, all books had been copied by hand or stamped out with woodblocks.
Around 1450 in Strasbourg, Gutenberg combined two ideas to invent printing with moveable type. He coupled the flexibility of a coin punch with the power of a wine press.
His invention enabled the production of books and the spread of knowledge and ideas throughout the Western World.
The secret to problem solving and innovation is curiosity. You generate lots of ideas to find the best of the best. By generating ideas you start by asking lots of questions.
By being curious. By thinking widely and not discarding ideas too soon. By convergent thinking. All of which help us to better understand and define the changes we are looking for.
Are you looking for ways of generating more innovative ideas by combining 2 or more different ideas? Consider these areas to stimulate your thinking:
Corporate innovation … changing business models
Business models are often neglected when considering new ideas for your business. They shouldn’t be. One of the best examples of an innovative business model is from Safelite Auto Glass.
What’s innovative here you may be thinking? It’s simple. An auto glass repair business that comes to you for your repair. Saving you time and convenience. A value proposition and business model that is hard to top.
Another good example is eBay, reflecting a new model and application of supply, demand, and sales.
Collaboration through partnerships.
Corporate innovation examples … partnerships
Nearly every new idea is a synthesis of other ideas.
So a great way to generate ideas is to force combinational possibilities from collaboration and partnerships with other people of diverse professions and skills.
Get a diverse team together and brainstorm how you could mix and combine existing and new ideas together. Combine products with those from wildly different sources.
Combine products and services
This is an easy one to think about.
Picture the smartphone product and then envision all the services this product provides the millions of apps that the smartphone can provide. Absolutely mind-boggling, isn’t it?
Multi-use
Can you come up with new product ideas that have multiple uses? Doesn’t have to be complex.
For example imagine a drill, with bits for multiple uses, such as a drill, sander, cleaner, screwdriver, etc.
Consider an example ofInternet Privacy
Running a business today almost certainly means having a digital presence, and being connected to the Internet.
While the benefits of this transformation are many, the security issues are still a daily challenge, with many solutions in the marketplace to address them.
Yes, internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are free to track all your browsing behavior and sell it to advertisers without consent. ISPs have access to literally all of your browsing behavior.
They act as a gateway for all of your web visits, clicks, searches, app downloads and video streams.
This represents a huge treasure trove of personal data, including health concerns, shopping habits, and porn preferences. ISPs want to use this data to deliver personalized advertising.
A simple example of this is the use of milk cartons to display missing persons’ picture and description details.
Can you imagine a better place to get this kind of attention?
Corporate innovation models … extra function
What do you get when you combine a camcorder with an iPod? A digital camcorder that uses a hard drive rather than tape. Up to 7 hours of video on one hard drive.
Plus you can do simple edits on the camera – like deleted scenes, even if they are in the middle of your “tape.” You can set up playlists (like on the iPod). Plus downloading to your computer is as simple as using iTunes.
No need for the tape, which slows data transfer significantly.
Dual function
This combination is a little more difficult to imagine. But this really only means there is more upside in this area, yes? A couple of wild dual function products we would use as examples here.
The first one is an inflatable sleeping coat that doubles as a sleeping bag. It makes camping in the great outdoors a little more convenient.
A second example is a jet ski that converts to a dune buggy with the simple push of a button.
Make it work differently
Take a product and think of an absurd way to make it work. For example, in the developing world batteries are expensive and electricity is unreliable.
Imagine a reliable radio that people could wind up by hand. It exists and has transformed the availability of information in many of the poorest regions of the Earth.
Think of what you would get combining a suitcase with a trolley?
Simple, a suitcase on rollers.
Another example? Combine a bell and a clock to derive an alarm clock.
Weird combinations
Combine products with those from wildly different sources. Take it to the extreme.
The more bizarre the combination the more original the ideas that are triggered.
An example is the combination of a bridge and canal overpass for boats and walkers.
The bottom line
In your business (or life) how can you combine two ideas together to create something new? Stuck for ideas?
Read magazines and rip out pictures or words that you find interesting. This is a great source of new ideas. Force yourself to make combinations.
In doing this, you may get an idea for a new product, a new service, or a new career.
Our message for businesses is simple. Think more like an innovator. Learn the innovation process.
Spend time at the front end on what the marketplace needs, rather than trying to build a slick marketing campaign selling your invention. That is the best way to success.
Innovation isn’t about talking, it’s about the doing. The action.
So get moving and begin your journey from accidental innovator to a high-performance innovation business leader.
Like anything else, fostering creative business ideas require practice. And distinguishing between creativity, invention, and innovation. So exercise and practice this skill and utilize it in as many areas of your business as you can.
Why not try it with your own products to drive innovation in your business?
There are many great business innovative ideas and examples we can learn from. Please post your comments below, offering questions or your own great examples of business creativity, design, and collaboration.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your business innovation process and efforts. Lessons are all around you. In some cases, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. Or collaborating with you. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of a business. Find him on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks
Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision
The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture
Like this short blog?Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.
