What is innovation? – Forget about definitions when it comes to innovation – go look at the innovation’s aspects

From The Business Innovation Book

Look around you! What if the world has not changed since its beginning? Do you agree that people perform their main activities and make efforts to improve this world, their personal lives and for the betterment of their children and their own well-being? Do they constantly work for progress? Yes, they do. Actually because of people’s constant desire for progress, improvement and advancement, humanity is as it is today. A long way has been travelled from caves to skyscrapers, from walking and using horses to high speed self-driven cars on highways or even in the air, from hunting to shopping, from fire to electricity. These are just a couple of examples of the people’s desire for advancement. All these haven’t been done for the mere sake of prosperity, well-being or welfare. It is because of the natural function of humans to build and improve their civilization.

Innovations play the most important role in the humanity progress and even without knowing it, almost all people work for it, actively or passively. Nowadays, innovation is one of the most googled words in internet. It is mentioned in any science, industry and business, from any politicians, businessman, leaders, teachers, journalists, etc. The word “innovation” is used for attracting customers, earning money, winning elections, leading people, convincing people to do something, spending governmental or corporate money, etc. As a result, the word has lost its value because of its frequent and not always appropriate usage. In the business world, it’s often used as an empty word, without meaningful content. You can test this statement by simply asking someone: what does innovation mean? What was the result of your asking?

After all, what are innovations actually? Are we able to define innovations?

The term “Innovation” derives from the Latin word “novus”, which means new or novel and the prefix “in” which has the meaning of introducing something new. For most people “to be innovative” means to be creative and/or to make something new. But does any novelty mean innovation? The new supermarket in the neighborhood is also new, but is it an innovation? For others, making innovations means to completely change the current state of something by introducing new products, or sometimes innovations are equated with new technology. For others, innovation means an invention, improvement or progress. Others define innovations as a new way of making money or materialization of a new idea. Interesting food for thoughts is also the question: is the innovation a result from some activities, successful ones or it is the process of achieving these results and acts to develop some ideas? In The Business Innovation Book, therefore, innovation is considered as the result of activities and the process itself is called innovation process.

It is clear that innovations are related to change, knowledge, new ideas, improvement of the current condition, and progress. But many other things do the same. As education per se. Do we need to go looking at some definitions so to clarify and elucidate the term of innovation? No we don't need!

Definitions are not about to be remembered, they serve to frame and explain the nature of a term or a topic. They should be understood, not memorized. That is why, I am going to present you the aspects of innovation. They are better means to explain innovation.

Most people can provide examples of innovative products such as tablets, PC or GSM, but few can clearly define the innovative aspects of these products and just few can assess new products as real or fake innovations.

The Business Innovation Book helps us with that issue. Here are the main attributes of innovations. Think of them as elements and different sides of innovations. They will help you to assess candidate innovations and will provide you helpful tool for identification.

•            Something new

•            Lead to improvement

•            Bring value

•            They are made on purpose, not accidentally

•            Satisfy a particular need or create new necessity

•            They are the result from systematic experiments

•            Well feed-backed from customers/users

•            They are reasonably priced, respectively are produced, created or executed in an economic reasonable way

•            Applicable for practical and commercial objectives

•            Create wealth or social welfare

•            Adoption of something existing

Use the aspects of innovations and forget about definitions. Take The Business Innovation Book for more knowledge on innovation!

Resource:

The Business Innovation Book:

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