There’s No Innovation Without A Definition
Though it seems like common sense, many organisations don’t define what they mean by innovation before they start innovating. Then, they wonder why there are few decent innovation outcomes they can show to stakeholders.
In many organisations, say the word “innovation” and you will most probably find it impossible to get any consensus at all with respect to meaning. People have very personal ideas of what constitutes innovation or not, and it is generally very difficult to change such strongly held beliefs. That’s especially true if those concerned feel a prospective innovation effort will stray onto their turf.
I’ve seen arguments on this topic go over the same ground for so long that sooner or later someone almost always suggests “we don’t need a definition, so let’s get on with it”. This is a mistake.
When there are multiple opinions on what’s needed from an innovation programme, it is a pretty good bet that nothing much is going to be delivered no matter how much time and money is devoted to the task.
The most successful innovation teams usually agree a definition that permits them to examine new things with very broad scope, but which avoids being excessively threatening to existing operations. In my own programmes, this is a definition that’s worked:
Innovation is “anything that wouldn’t have been achieved through ordinary business-as-usual processes”.
This definition doesn’t make any prescriptions on either volume or scale of innovation that might be undertaken. The team is free to do anything at all which isn’t already in progress elsewhere.
Such a definition provides balance between the flexibility needed to do new innovation, and making sure that powerful stakeholders don’t feel obliged to kill off the innovation programme before it goes anywhere.
Are you worried that your organisation isn’t doing enough innovation? If so, James A Gardner’s free book has plenty of advice on how to start your innovation effort.
