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Innovation Applies To Your Career By Frank Bradshaw, CFE Tom Peters, in his book The Circle of Innovation, wrote, “If the other guy is getting better, then you had better be getting better faster than that other guy is getting better—or you are getting worse. Translation: it’s innovation, and hint—‘it’ applies to your career.” The world is changing, and rapidly. In the business world, such watch phrases as “Make Dust or Eat Dust,” or “Lead or Bleed” prevail. The velocity of innovation is accelerating. New computers are replaced within a year by units that are both faster and cheaper. New consumer products are introduced almost daily. The life span of a corporation is less than 40 years. New automobiles are produced from scratch in less than five years. Technical design knowledge is obsolete within a decade. This process is sweeping the entire world. What about the future? Big organizations will continue breaking up, downsizing, reorganizing, laying off, offering golden parachutes, etc. Even executives, who once thought themselves safe, are no longer deemed “untouchable.” Somewhere in the chaos of competition, their organizations lost their cutting edge and end up on the cutting board. Competitors came in with new ideas and ways of doing things and developed products quicker and cheaper. To be successful, one must change faster than the change—that is, innovate at a greater rate than the environment is evolving. If an individual does not innovate, they might find that their career may not extend for more than 15 years, and they will become one of the many relics of the past that litter the landscape. Only when one innovates will they have a chance to escape the threat of becoming one of these relics. This is the socioeconomic reality of the 21st century. What is innovation? In its simplest form, innovation is a process by which one produces something new and unique. Creativity is the talent one uses to generate the ideas needed for innovation, and then these new ideas are explored and tested. Thus, the equation is: Creative Ideas + Experimentation = Innovation Innovation is a process that is used to create novelty. This novelty can be a new product or a new and/or improved way of doing things, something unique or uniquely applied that adds value to the product. Think of the innovation process as a tool for exploring the unknown. Anyone can explore the unknown, as the process for creating innovation comprises three basic principles or fundamentals. The first fundamental of innovation is that someone must generate ideas. The more ideas generated, the greater the possibility that a successful innovation will occur. Innovation is the process of selecting paths, exploring those paths and then mapping the unknown so that something successful will be discovered. The more paths explored, the better the unknown will be mapped and the knowledge gained from this exploration becomes the innovator’s personal proprietary information base. The second principle of the innovation equation is experimentation. Here, selecting the most promising ideas for testing is the key, and the faster the experimental phases, the more likely a successful innovation will result. Nevertheless to say, experimentation can be frustrating. The innovator often gets discouraged when it seems that every new path turns out to be a dead end. Yet one must not give up. The innovator needs to think differently. Dead ends and failures are a natural part of the experimental process. A key notion here is that failure keeps the creative mind churning out more ideas, which leads to new paths and fresh knowledge to draw on. The third fundamental of the innovation process involves the notion that for a new idea to be successful, the innovator must shift people’s mental picture as to what the innovation is. When a clever innovation has been developed, is the job done? Not at all. Most innovations die for a whole variety of reasons, including lack of financing, overzealous competition and lack of acceptance, to name a few. An innovation succeeds when others recognize its uniqueness and want it for that reason. The simple equation is: Innovation + Paradigm Shift = Breakthrough A paradigm is a mental model and for a paradigm shift to work, the innovation developed must evoke a new mental model. The point is that for an innovation to be successful there must be perception that something is new and unique. The innovation must be recognized for this in the marketplace of ideas. Sometimes the innovator may have to rely on various labels to create this paradigm shift. These tags can help consumers recognize the innovation as unique. If the innovator fails to develop the proper mental model in the mind of the consumer, then the consumer is more likely to see the innovation as a mere look alike and the idea will have lost its character. Only when the innovator combines innovation with a well developed and conceived mental model—thus establishing a unique niche—will there be the potential for breakthrough; and a breakthrough is where one wants to be. It is a result of this breakthrough whereby the market recognizing the fact that something unique has been created and consumers are then willing to pay a value-added premium to use it. Remember the three fundamental principles for innovation. First, ideas are the raw materials for innovations; second, experimentation needs to be conducted and failure is a normal result of experimentation; and third, a paradigm shift must accompany the innovation to achieve breakthrough and acceptance. It is this shift that creates a sense of uniqueness in the minds of the consumers and gives the innovation a special market niche. Your career depends on “it”! Frank Bradshaw, CFE, is director of the Heymann Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. |
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2003
International Association of Assembly Managers |