How do innovations differ

How do you define innovation? As expected, our panelists shared some keen insights and practical strategies that you can benefit from. The actions required to create new ideas, processes or products which when implemented lead to positive effective change. While invention requires the creation of new ideas, processes or products, innovation moves one step further and requires implementation of the inventive act. Innovation also implies a value system which seeks to derive a positive outcome from the inventive act.

For example, actions which lead to a negative performance metric would not be considered innovative, even if they met the requirements of novelty and enabling actions. Value is the key word, stressing the difference between innovation and invention. The definition is simple, easy to memorize and also good enough to encompass innovation in all the value chain. Innovation is something new to your business that fills an untapped customer need.

Ideally, the innovation builds a new market. An innovation is an idea that has been transformed into practical reality. For a business, this is a product, process, or business concept, or combinations that have been activated in the marketplace and produce new profits and growth for the organization. I differentiate radical and disruptive innovation from the incremental kind, since the latter can happen if the company is simply great at what it already does.

True innovation is far more than an extension of what is done normally, and while being different, uses capabilities that exist in a company or are augmented by strategic alliances. Therefore, something is an innovation not simply because it is new to that company, but because it is simply new. Innovation is a process to bring new ideas, new methods or new products to an organization.

It teaches you how to quickly and easily identify the critical aspects of your idea, and then transform it into a compelling value proposition that you can use to pitch and prove that your idea is a winner.

Find out how to leverage it in this self-paced, online course. Innovation is relative. Because I think this other company has done it before. Leveraging what someone else has done is a perfectly legitimate innovation strategy. Having a view of the future landscape of consumer wants and needs — whether known or unarticulated — and developing solutions that grow your business while fulfilling or altering the lifestyle and behavior of your target consumers.

At first glance, the responses from our experts about the definition of innovation appear different and divergent. A closer review show that they are in violent agreement but just stated in different ways. It makes sense why the definition of innovation is still misunderstood. All the experts pointed out that innovation must a deliver some positive outcome whether it is tangible value, creation of a new market or a competitive advantage and b that the actions required to deliver this value must be new to the company.

Some experts mentioned that innovation applied to stakeholders across the value chain, while a few focused on end customers and markets. What is clear to us is that these narrower boundaries are more defined by the work experience of our experts. Since all our experts are working in the innovation space, we combined the responses to say that innovation does apply across the value chain. How do you make innovation practical and saleable to senior management? Education We develop resources for students and educators interested in exploring new economic thinking.

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From the collection : Economics of Innovation. Innovation flows from invention. It is a core competency, sought by both companies AND governments alike.

And countries that harness innovation and entrepreneurship as engines for new sources of growth will be more likely to pull out and stay out of recession. Consider the microprocessor. Someone invented the microprocessor. But how to persuade creative people to do so? First and foremost, there must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness.

The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. Cerebration and group-think are key components to turning invention to innovation.

Creating a corporate culture where the goals are measured in simplified KPIs and easily measured metrics might actually stifle innovation in many ways. Looking at the companies and organizations that are considered successful in innovation Google, Apple, Tesla, Facebook , we see some common behaviors and environments.

The first is the culture of cerebration, of promoting employees to share and internally market their ideas and projects. Some of this could be influenced by a higher concentration of like-minded talent, such as in Silicon Valley, where former colleagues and trusted friends have migrated from company to company while maintaining their social networks and friends of shared interests and hobbies.

But all of these companies have also created a corporate culture that recognizes the value and the opportunity of cerebration and group-think.

They have created a system that operates both as a business, and as an idea factory. We learned that the only way for businesses to consistently succeed today is to attract smart creative employees and create an environment where they can thrive at scale. Transforming a business from invention to innovation might not be a huge change, an enormous investment, or a massive restructuring. It could be as simple as adding some simple social concepts and some new ways of managing and measuring success into the existing structure.

Think back in your career to when you were an eager young University graduate with dreams and ideas. How valuable would it have been to work alongside Jobs, Schmidt, Zuckerberg, Joy, Brin, Bezos, or one of the hundreds of other visionaries that we respect today? We all have the opportunity now, to take our experience and knowledge and invest that in the organization.