Archive for April 6th, 2008
Innovator’s Dilemmas: invention vs. innovation?
Both words invention and innovation share the notion of novelty, meaning an expectation for something that is new. There are quite a few articles out there debating this subject. Some imply that an innovation is something which has been deployed and put into practice, while some other claim that only successful implementations qualify as true innovations. As you can already tell, some of the discussion is about semantics.
My take is that in everyday language, any new concept can be understood as an invention but an innovation would be defined as something new making a positive and a significant difference. As a matter of fact, entrepreneurs working on launching innovative products and services are expected to be able to articulate that “differential” in unequivocal terms.
Once that is understood, the next logical step is about estimating the range of qualitative and quantitative values of the innovation and, most importantly, whether they happen to be meaningful to those people who are supposed to benefit from them. In a market based society this means being meaningful enough to be funded, purchased, exchanged or sponsored.
The next step is about understanding the model for an innovation’s adoption and diffusion. This is your one to three year business case portraying not just financial estimates, but also the underlying assumptions behind the numbers, e.g. drivers and inhibitors, opportunities and threats, strengths and weaknesses.
With regards to whether only successful implementations qualify as innovations, it should be noted that there are examples of unequivocal technical innovations which fail to take off. For instance, the facto standards may be prevalent (e.g. the footprint and critical mass of legacy systems) and regulators and standard bodies could settle for alternative, and at times inferior, implementations. In other cases, the innovator is ahead of his/her time when the market, the value chain and the ecosystem of vendors are not yet in place. It is also true that some innovations fail to take off due to poor business practices as the innovator might not possess management skills.
Related posts:
- To invent or not to invent?; Not invented here; Vulcan Mindmelt Innovation
- To innovate or not to innovate?
- Do you really need to be disruptive?
- The globalization of innovation
- Who is the innovator?
- How do you demo innovative technologies?
- Do you really need business modeling?
- Innovators’ dilemmas
- Is innovation just about problem solving?
Picture Credits: © 1997-2007 Hemera Technologies Inc
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| Las Vegas, 3 April 08 |  |
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