Innovation is becoming increasingly popular. People seem to think it is the key to successful growth. Yet Jim Collins most recent book Great by Choice, which is definitely worth reading, shows that this is not the case.
Let us stand back and ask: “What do we really mean by innovation?”. Is it:
- creating something totally new from scratch or
- taking an existing invention and adapting it to meet a real market need better?
If, like us, you are only really interested in business growth and profit, presumably you do not really care as long as customers buy your products and services in far larger numbers? Yet most of the conversations about innovation are about idea generation, number of patents etc. without any apparent link to revenue growth! Odd…
Let us go back to Jim Collins’ book. He explains that while the businesses that excel, even during economic times of chaos and uncertainty, do innovate, they do so far less than their competitors. Then let us consider Apple. Although they are heralded as one of the most successful leaders in innovation of the past few years, they are not actually pioneering totally new inventions. They are taking products and concepts that already exist and making them work far better (more simply, more powerfully, more beautifully) for their market.
If you think about it, it all makes really good sense. The statistics of finding a brand new innovation that happens to hit the market’s sweet spot, are horrifying low.
Innovation – Do big new inventions make commercial sense?
It makes much better sense to use one or more elements that other companies have already put to the market test, learning from and improving on them to develop something even better. It is almost like edging forward, inch by inch, feeling your company’s way to success. It has worked dramatically for products as different as energy bars to Apple’s Iphone.
The other day I listened to a webinar purporting to show the way forward for innovation. It talked about systems and processes. Now, while I can believe that systematising parts of the process is useful, this is just not the crux of the innovation puzzle.
I recently wrote a white paper on how fast growing companies really are driving innovation success. If you would like a copy click here.
In the meantime, if you have any real live examples of innovation that is driving business growth, do please tell me about them below.
