Looking for Innovation in all the wrong places!

Posted on | September 25, 2009 | No Comments

We hear the word INNOVATION a lot these days.

We are told that WE NEED innovation.

WE are TOLD that innovation needs to be made sustainable.

It would seem that any self respective profit generating entity is singing about how it has some edge on innovation in banking, retail, environmental issues and the list goes on and on and on.

So what is innovation?

“the creation and implementation of new processes, products, services and methods of delivery, which result in significant improvements in outcomes, efficiency, effectiveness or quality.” (Mulgan, G and Albury, D (2003) Innovation in the Public Sector, Cabinet Office, London.)

I think we spend too much time looking for innovation or really imagining that it is in the shape of a thing.

Innovation=mp3 player

Innovation=hybrid car

Innovation=juicer

What if these are not innovation at all but the product of innovation?

What if innovation was nothing more than an intimate understanding of an environment, be that environment micro or macro?

Physical innovation happens when we take the time to THINK, ask questions and respond to our environments, and those we coexist with, from the perspective of our intimate understanding of that very environment.

This would answer the question why some really great projects, ideas, things fail and others succeed!

Innovation is not physical but a mental construct first and when we forget this, as we do, we are stumbling around looking for a light switch in the dark!

Hope you don’t stub your toe too often!

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