Then we decided to appreciate people with Innovation Award and for that month theme of a monthly magazine was innovation. Definitely that inspired us in many ways to do something innovative in our day to day lives. I think its very success of Web 2.0, when they came up with the idea of blog. A blog can bring such a revolution and I could see that in our company.
Innovation Vs Invention Debate
It’s always a very attractive option of falling into the debate over innovation and invention. Prof. Jan Fagerberg of University of Oslo states in his article that
“Invention is the first occurrence of an idea for a new product or process while innovation is the first attempt to carry it out into practice.”
And it’s much clear argument in the debate! What is significant here is the intention. Inventions are necessity driven and innovations are commerce driven. There are many explanations on this particular debate. There are many examples where you can distinguish the difference between invention and innovation vividly but there are some situations where you can’t make a difference at all. First audio recording device could be invention and iPod is the innovation. Many inventions help other inventions to happen. Magnetic tape was used for the recording of sounds in the first attempt of experiment and invention of magnetic tape proves to be the mother invention to the audio recording device.
My experience
I’ must be in fifth grade when I learned the story of Eureka, and Archimedes, first scientist I learned about. And for some reason I started believing that Innovations are only science’s babies. Until, you are not science graduate or postgraduate you can’t be innovator or inventor. But after four years, when I learned Indian percussion instrument Tabla and read more about music and instruments. Basically, Amir Khusrau invented a Table out of single Pakhawaj in 13th century and that turns out to be made a huge independent league for the instrument.
History wasn’t my favorite subject when I was in school, but lately my realization of my lack of history knowledge leads me to read history. I was reading about the Indus Valley Civilization and the factors that helped its growth. The invention of irrigation around 4500 BCE was one of the major factors that led to planned infrastructure. People were migrating from once place to another place in search of water. Major time of a year they used to spend in migration related activities. When irrigation invented people was started settling down in the valley. Migrants from many places came together, shared cultures, values and ideas.
Sometimes, I think we could learn more about innovation and people from human history. Growth of Indus Valley civilization was accelerated by the invention of irrigation around 4500 BCE and that led to further planned infrastructure.
There are some great examples of how innovations can have socio-cultural effects. A Nobel prize winner Norman Borlaug saved over a billion people worldwide from starvation from his research popularly known as “Green revolution”. Where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. As a result of his innovation India Pakistan and Mexico became not only food sufficient but also exporters of the wheat.
Corporate and innovation
In corporate world if you want it or not you have to innovate that’s way to survive in a competition, whether it is a product or service or process. I always think of analogy of what tax is to employee innovation is to companies. Long terms benefits but there is always reluctance. Consumers becoming more aware and high-tech, expectation graph keep hitting the roof. So there is tremendous pressure on companies and executives to redefine products and services.
Poka-yoke is one of major design process innovation that happened in Japan. Innovated by Shigeo Shingo. Basically it advocates mistake proofing systems. Process or equipment should be build in way operator shouldn’t make mistake in using it. This idea was so exciting everybody used it with both hands. Some examples are USB sockets, floppy drives, and SIM card used in cellular phones.
Some frameworks leverage innovations. Take an example of web, from its Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. paradigm shift happened in the use of technologies and business models. New standards, frameworks, tools, products, protocols and new businesses have emerged as part of this drive. This journey has been fast and furious for the corporates. Not only for internet companies but also for engineering and manufacturing giants, local restaurants, retailers, media companies, export and import businesses and many more because of the need of using internet for being efficient and effective. Story doesn’t stop here; specifications are being laid out for Web 3.0 and even 4.0. That means innovation is inevitable. Strategic brains consistently have to think on how the market will behave with these dynamics in coming years.
Driving innovation
Creativity is the force works behind innovation and confidence and support is the creativity booster. Giving confidence to the people in believing their ideas helps people become Innovator. Blame is the biggest killer of any innovative idea. What if it doesn’t work, you get the blame. That’s discouraging. Mistakes should be allowed to make and considerate amount of tolerant in the work environment. Appreciations of idea and free time. A golden piece of advice that William McKinght, chairman of 3M in 1948 gave in his three paragraph note, even today it makes completely sense. He writes
“As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.
Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.
Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.”
- William McKnight, 3M Chairman, 1948
He suggested 15% of their time should be invested in the interests of employee whatever they want and that created Richard Drew. Richard Drew invented masking tape and cellophane tape. For almost decades nobody used the concept effectively. And Google came along used this concept effectively and went little further and made 20% free time concept and allowed their employees to work on the passions they want to pursue.
Innovation a personal responsibility
Innovation is majorly influenced by our habits. If our day to day habits doesn’t challenge status quo, it’s just the talk we could do. It happens not only with respect to innovation, it happens to everything whether it’s an environment damage or poverty or anything. We just do a talk, no substantial effort and no results. Everything boils down to habits; the way we perform our duties or regular work. Not only creativity but organized approach of bringing it into a reality is what makes its possible. Precisely, its a team work of right brain and left brain.
Thanks for reading !
Note : Send me an email at shinde.sushil@gmail.com for PPT. Use MS Office 2007, to get the best of animation.
References –
3. http://open-your-innovation.com/2009/09/28/invention-is-not-innovation/
Superb way to differentiate between innovation and invention...
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