Innovation & Innovators

 Innovation is not serendipitous, but a sustainable and scalable way of idea generation-implementation continuum.

Innovation is about figuring alternative ways to do things. The hybrid nature of innovation is a combination of something old with something new. The speed of change is expedited, so does the speed of innovation. It requires a sound and competent understanding of what is currently being done, and how to do things better.

 Innovation has a broader spectrum and diverse taste. Innovation progress can be made when organizations can build differentiated innovation competency, build a strong innovation portfolio with the right mix of incremental and breakthrough innovation.

Innovation & knowledge reinvention: Knowledge is based on refined thoughts, often collectively. Knowledge is not an isolated fact, but needs to flow and transfer for tapping innovation potential. As outdated knowledge will stifle innovation, it's important to organize some activities for knowledge re-invention - refurbish old knowledge, encourage new knowledge generation. Innovation is often a team activity; complementary mindsets, quality information and updated knowledge can bring in fresh ideas, diverse perspectives, and deep insight to make new creations and build better futures together.

Cross boundary innovation is crucial to reinvent some traditional industries or enable new industries to emerge. You should look to businesses outside their industry, to connect the dots whatever it makes sense; spur out-of-the-box thinking and dot-connecting innovation; find examples and opportunities for how these other firms addressed similar challenges; and initiate knowledge-transferable innovation.

Innovation & logic: Effective innovation management requires a variety of logic as the hidden clue, developing tailored innovation principles, methodologies, technologies, tools or practices to improve innovation success rate. The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s attitude and capabilities to manage innovation in a logical way. The business competitiveness is gated by innovation, and innovation is gated by their ability to "systematize" innovation by applying information technologies seamlessly, optimizing processes coherently, and leveraging talent smartly.

Because how an organization orchestrates to generate ideas, manages innovative activities, measures the results, etc, is determined by how that organization has decided to craft a good innovation strategy, clarify logic and streamline processes, tak structural innovation efforts to create novel ideas and implement them effectively. A good innovation shouldn’t be just the serendipity; and a bad innovation needs to become a learning lesson. No failures, no innovation, but you have to failover and fail forward.

Innovation & people-centricity: Without people, innovation is meaningless. Without innovation, human society will get stuck. People-centricity should be a critical component in the digital innovation playbook. It is about how to engage employees or empower customers for innovating; people over tools, to gain insight and empathy, take different propositions and approaches to innovative problem-solving. Organizations want their people to bring in growth, by building a competitive edge and harnessing innovation.

People are innovators, not technology or process. Organizations need to get deeply immersed in designing, developing, and delivering innovative products, services or solutions to make their customers happier and people smarter. There are many ingredients to build professional innovation competency, such as interdisciplinary skills and knowledge, learning plasticity, openness to experience, ability to identify patterns, tendency to constantly question the status quo, tolerance of ambiguity, and risk-intelligence.

Innovation is not serendipitous, but a sustainable and scalable way of idea generation-implementation continuum. The success of innovation management is a thought-out planning and seamless execution. Innovation fails because everyone is talking about it instead of doing it collaboratively. Innovation success demands interdisciplinary knowledge, insightful understanding, patience, persistence, and courage, among other things for reaping the benefit from innovation consistently.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu