Innovation Management

Establishing terminology and frames of reference helps set the context and build a solid foundation from which we can have an intelligent conversation about this topic.

Creativity and Innovation are very often confused. For example, one popular author recently defined innovation as "...any idea that generates wealth." That's lazy thinking.

A good definition of creativity is that it is problem identification and idea generation whereas innovation is idea selection, development and commercialisation.

Within idea generation, a further definition is valuable: the number of ideas produced, the novelty of the ideas produced, the diversity of ideas produced and the frequency of their production.

Predicting the future

Radical leaps / disruptive technologies are most often the result of sustained, incremental changes.

Further, the S-curve shows us that competitors who slowly improve their offering will eventually surpass more successful rivals as they mature and their scope for improvement diminishes.

We can use this type of knowledge to predict the future.

For example, by identifying a set number of product features and incrementally improving each feature over a timeline, we find that groups can

a) Generate some very good ideas for maximising competitive advantage.

b) Gain insight into the probable direction of their industry.

c) Generate disruptive ideas.

d) Leapfrog easily implemented changes to the big ideas and consequently, leapfrog competitors.

Additionally, we find that following the above process in a sustained, consistent manner results in a large idea pool of the above types of ideas and a general increase in the quality of those ideas.

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