‘Innovation’, everyone believes its important and everyone wants it but few really understand where it comes from. Add to that the ‘next big idea’ that will launch your business into the stratosphere and you are in the territory that many believe you must be aspiring to if you are going to make anything of yourself in business.
Reality may be far from this for many business leaders but practically if you’re chasing innovation and the next big idea you are unlikely to find either, but lets pause for a moment.
In October 2014 edition of the Australian Boss Magazine, Caitlin Fitzsimmons identified off the back of a consideration of the BRW 50 Most Innovative Companies List, what she considered to be five broad approaches to be innovative:
- Nurture innovation in-house through a well established innovation process
- Collaborate with a partner as a cornerstone of your innovation process
- Cultivate many partners by opening your business to networks and encouraging them to innovate in areas you are simply not the best at
- Crowdsource through competitions and use customer co-creation to spark innovation
- Find an innovative start-up and buy it rather than developing it in-house but ensure its consistent with your strategy.
From the other perspective, in a recent article in Inc. magazine ‘The Secret Formula for Big Ideas’, Laura Garnet interviewed Jonathan Swanson the co-founder of Tumbtack who created what he described as a rigorous process to come up with the great idea for his business. The approach he outlined can be summarized as follows:
- We looked for big problems that affected hundred of millions of people in all walks of life and which could solved with the application of technology
- We identify a technology that would solve the problem in way not already conceived yet, which required us to bounce ideas backwards and forwards as we tested various options
- We needed the confidence to do something that no one had done before and the humility to learn about ourselves and make lots of mistakes.
So from one perspective innovation arises from a deliberate process of engagement internally and externally, and from the other (the great idea) that innovation should be directed at the core mass of the market (most customers) and identifying a customer value add (problem solved) that can be achieved through the application of technology and leapfrogging ahead of the market.
Lets ‘un-pause’ now and restart the conversation from my opening paragraph … ‘practically if you’re chasing innovation and the next big idea you are unlikely to find either …’. Why would I form this view? Both of the examples above seem to imply that this is exactly what you must do, a regimented process to guide innovation. Well, none of the points set out above are necessarily wrong its just that I think they overlook the most important source of innovation and the wellspring of great ideas.
What is this, its simple, its human ingenuity sparked by a passion.
Great innovations and great ideas are made by men and women who become really focused (sometimes obsessed) with an idea and lose themselves in finding the answer. More often than not it is about making something easier or better or filling what for them is an obvious gap. Usually this insight (80%+ of the time) comes from their work, their personal interests or activities. Why, because that is what they are so deeply involved in. Only about 4% of these ‘innovations’ come from a logical search process. Why, because logic does not breed the passion and the focus required for these breakthroughs.
If you want to find innovations and the next big idea, then find the unyielding passion in you that will drive you to see the insights and make the breakthroughs. If you want your employees to do this, then that’s a much harder task as you must nurture an environment to allow their passion to be free. The competitive engine in your business will need to be very strong.
Creativity, passion and the desire to solve a problem are strong drivers of achievement and performance. They exist within an individual and sparking them is an art not a science.
An organisation can be innovative but only when innovative people live there.
