I’m going to point out something most individuals often misunderstand. Innovation and creativity are not synonymous. Creativity is definitely a factor, but innovation is a much longer process string. But innovative people do think differently.
Being innovative rarely is an accident. You can’t just happen to be innovative — it’s a process. A process that takes time and considerable effort.
There are steps and crucial information that must be collected. Being innovative is one of the most difficult things to accomplish.
I spent over 40 years in the business environment working for large businesses. We spend up to 10-15% of discretionary income looking for new business innovation. And quite honestly we never had tremendous success or discovered what began to hold back innovation in a company.
We tend to think of innovation as an individual effort. It’s much easier to visualize someone like Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk, in a flash of inspiration, coming up with a brilliant idea than it is to imagine a vast, collective effort. Yet make no mistake. Innovation is a team sport and great innovators are great collaborators.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo mission which put a man on the moon, one of the vastest collective efforts in history. It involved 400,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians working across government, academia, and private industry. It was, above all, a public effort that mobilized resources across all facets of society.
Innovation in a company … not letting go of the cash cow
Many people think of innovation as discarding the old to make room for the new, but as Bain & Co.’s Chris Zook points out in Profit From The Core, smart companies realize that the bulk of their profits will come from current lines of business.
Take Smith Corona as an excellent example. Smith Corona was the best typewriter company for … well, a long time leading to the late 1980s and the development of the personal computer.
From then to the mid-1990s, they became a leader in technologies related to typewriters, such as:
Grammar checkers
Built-in dictionaries
Laptop word processor
PDA’s
So they had a strong foothold in personal computer word processing just as personal computers and word processing were in their infancy.
Interesting, no?
They were in a perfect position to transition from the typewriter market (which were soon to be digitally disrupted) to the word processing market.
But they didn’t pull the trigger. Why may you be thinking?
My view and takeaways:
They viewed the personal computer market as a rival technology and market.
They believed they could win the competition by continued improvements in typewriter technology.
They found it too difficult to give up their ‘cash cow’ market position for a new market (Even if you suspect the long term forecast is pointing to your competition).
They were locked into one frame of reference and refused to consider alternative situational views.
It is all about the timing of decisions, the culture of change, and the ability to take risks. If you want to have any chance of avoiding digital disruption, you need to be able to make changes and do so before you have to.
Innovation is only innovation if it’s useful. Otherwise, it’s just being creative or being unnecessary.
Innovation is what drives progress, what drives the human race one step closer to the impossibility of perfection.
In order to be innovative, you have to think differently. Here are 11 ways innovative people think differently from the rest:
Don’t forget innovation depends on many skills
Let’s go back to the story of Fleming and Penicillin. The reason that Fleming was unable to bring Penicillin to market was that, as a biologist, he lacked many of the requisite skills.
It wasn’t until a decade later that two chemists, Howard Florey, and Ernst Boris Chain, picked up the problem and were able to synthesize penicillin.
Even then, it took people with additional expertise in fermentation and manufacturing to turn it into the miracle cure we know today.
Here is an interesting fact. From Dan Pink’s Blog, we found the following facts on innovation that we would like to share with you:
A study of the top 50 game-changing innovations over a 100 year period showed that nearly 80% of those innovations were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.
Wow! 80% created by someone outside the field where innovation occurred!
Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA was not achieved by simply plowing away at the lab, but by incorporating discoveries in biology, chemistry and x-ray diffraction to inform their model building.
They take the time to understand
You can’t innovate unless you understand what already exists. Even if you think you understand the playing field, the fact is that you don’t.
Industries aren’t stagnant — unless they’re dying. And even then, there is so much information one can learn about any particular industry. Knowing everything is basically impossible.
And if the industry is still growing, it isn’t even possible to keep up with all the progress.
Nevertheless, the most innovative people understand unless they know the industry well enough, they will never understand what it’s lacking.
If you don’t know what industry is lacking, then you can’t possibly understand what innovations are needed.
They take the time to understand their target market
No matter what innovation you’re in the process of creating, it will involve people, living things.
You need to understand what it is your users need before you can give it to them.
That’s all that innovation really is: giving people what they need in a better, more efficient, and more pleasing way.
They’re problem solvers
There are plenty of trending businesses that do very well in the beginning, but then die out as soon as the trend shifts.
problems solvers
This is why the tech bubble will inevitably pop — too many “cool” startups are creating products and services that have “fun” as their single utility.
The problem with “fun” is it requires constant novelty and risks becoming boring. Innovation is a necessary part of progress and, therefore, goes beyond “fun.”
To innovate is to create to fill a necessity gap. If you aren’t solving problems, you’re only creating them.
They focus on being the best
You can innovate by creating a poor-quality product or service, but your business is going to eventually get beaten out by competitors; it happens all the time.
If you’re innovating and creating a crappy product and someone comes out with the same solution but better, what do you think is going to happen?
Even if you did come up with the idea, no one will remember because you won’t be around to tell the story.
They understand the critical nature of design
Apple is Apple because of the integration of design and utility.
Design alone won’t get you anywhere, but without a physical, visual appeal, you won’t get anywhere either.
If whatever you’re selling doesn’t look great and isn’t easy to use, it’s lacking. And if it’s lacking, it leaves room for improvement — improvement someone else is likely to act on.
They know the “rules” but know when to ignore them
You can’t innovate if you keep doing the same things everyone else does, the same way everyone else does them.
Rules of any industry are simply guidelines, starting points to build off or to tweak and change.
If you do things the way they have always been done, then you’re going to reach results that are too similar to those who have already been created.
They manage to thrive in the midst of uncertainty
The difficulty with innovating is the uncertainty that always accompanies it.
Innovation and uncertainty necessarily go hand in hand — how could you possibly be certain something is going to work if no one has ever done it before?
If it really is an innovation, whether or not it will take is a complete mystery.
They see efficiency as key
Innovation has always depended on making something better, meaning faster, easier, less costly, more useful.
Efficiency is the driving force behind innovation. Human beings love efficiency because it’s literally ingrained in our biology.
We have egos that are both incredibly lazy and only want the very best.
They get creative
Finally, when you understand what you’re working with, what people need, what they want, what you’re going to have to deal with, and how you’re going to overcome all the hurdles that are likely ahead of you, it’s time to get creative.
No idea is too silly until it’s too silly. Jotting, taking notes, doodling, bouncing ideas off of others — all part of the process.
They believe in themselves
Innovative individuals are only capable of being innovative because they believe they are capable of being innovative.
If you don’t believe you can accomplish something, then you’ll never break past the necessary threshold.
Innovation is difficult. It used to be easier, but even innovation has its limits — everything does.
It only makes sense that, as innovation solves problems, people will inevitably have fewer problems to solve.
If you don’t have the confidence and faith in yourself to push through all the muck, you’re going to end up giving up before you even get started. In fact, that’s what usually happens.
They focus on the vision
Believing in yourself is one thing. And not always an easy thing.
What makes it easier, however, is having a vision you believe in. If you believe in the product, the service, the company/team, then sometimes that’s enough.
Just bear in mind not everyone will believe in your vision. In fact, most probably won’t.
The bottom line
People like to poke at and make fun of others as a means of making themselves feel better for never accomplishing anything in their own lives.
Nevertheless, being the only one who believes something will work while most people disagree makes focusing on the end goal more difficult.
For this reason, you must be absolutely convinced what you’re working on is necessary.
What’s important to consider is that when a task is automated, it is also democratized and value shifts to another place. So, for example, e-commerce devalues the processing of transactions but increases the value of things like customer service, expertise, and resolving problems with orders, which is why we see all those smiling faces when we walk into an Apple Store.
That’s what we often forget about innovation. It’s essentially a very human endeavor and, to measure true progress, humans always need to be at the center.
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 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
