Certainly by now you’ve heard: Innovation is being heralded as the key to business success in coming decade. “No matter what business you’re in, your future will be shaped, even determined, by innovation,” writes Michael Michalko in Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques.
For those of us in the design and creativity business, innovation is all part of a day’s work. And we’re delighted the rest of the world is taking notice. Perhaps we just need to label what we do as innovation, rather than inspiration, creativity, idea generation, or – perhaps our most common term – concepting.
This vocabulary shift isn’t a big change, but it has its consequences. If you’re tracking billable hours, innovation isn’t typically a task code. You would bill your time to concept development, or design, or writing. (Or, if you’re reading this instead of actually concepting for a client, I’m sorry to tell you but you’ll have to bill your time to the dreaded admin.)
Innovation has truly become “the new black,” according to Bruce Nusbaum, editor of the BusinessWeek blog NusbaumOnDesign, which chronicles innovation strategy, service innovation, and the like.
Google “innovation” and you get some 126,000,000 results (at least as of this post).
On LinkedIn, 277 jobs have the keyword Innovation. You’ll find everything from a Senior Materials Innovator to a VP Strategy and Innovation. On Monster, you’ll find listings for an Innovation Client Coordinator and a Process Innovation Manager. You can even apply for the Project Manager for the Project for Innovation in Education at Harvard University. (I count 4 prepositions in that job title. Perhaps the first, most notable innovation for the lucky candidate who lands this job would be to tighten the word count in his or her title.)
Yes, Innovation (cap intentional) is speeding ahead. It hasn’t yet overtaken the wildly popular Customer Experience (2,020,000 Google results), but it’s certainly in the passing lane. And Brand and Six Sigma and Quality may all be slowing down a bit, dare I say, pulling over on the shoulder because they can’t keep up. Yes, they’re important topics and worthy business strategies. It’s just that now, Innovation is pedal to the metal.
So what are some quick ways to make sure innovation is really happening in your business? I’ve outlined a few in “10 Innovation Ideas When You Are on a Deadline.”
– Defer judgment – both positive and negative.
– Seek quantity. It leads to quality.
– Build on the ideas of others options (often called hitchhiking or leapfrogging).
Do you have others? Please share.
Tags: creative process, Innovation
Hi, Gwyneth. It may seem basic, but starting with a good night’s sleep helps the right brain flow with ideas.
Helpful observations. Now we can look forward to all the new words created from “innovation” as happened to “imagination.” Innomation?
Elaine,
Yes indeed. How quickly we can figure something out once we “sleep on it.”
Here’s some interesting support from the Harvard Business Review:
“Companies today glorify the executive who logs 100-hour workweeks, the road warrior who lives out of a suitcase in multiple time zones, and the negotiator who takes a red-eye to make an 8 a.m. meeting. But to Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, the Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, this kind of corporate behavior is the antithesis of high performance.”
– Harvard Business Review: Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer
October 1, 2006
John,
And how about innovative names for those who innovate:
Imaginators ?
Innovationists ?
Innovationals ?
(Sorry)
Innovation seems to have become the same thing as creativity, the catchword of the 1980’s. However, an innovation is something that can be applied to business to improve productivity (in a wide sense), so it’s just not any creative ad hoc solution to a problem. It must me repeatable. Actually, the term is largely a spillover from political economy, where innovation is described as the driver of growth. (Karl Marx called it “the development of productive forces” – same idea really.)
Gwyneth,
In idea number 3, you make a key point: lose your ego.
When you are talking you are not in competition; you are talking to move innovation forward, which is hard enough as it is without ego getting in the way.