INNOVATION AS A PURPOSEFUL AND SYSTEMATIC DISCIPLINE

[In continuation of my earlier post:]

Just sharing one of my most favourite and inspiring quotes: 

"In innovation, as in any other endeavor, there is talent, there is ingenuity, and there is knowledge. 

But when all is said and done, what innovation require is hard, focused, purposeful work. 

If diligence, persistence, and commitment are lacking, talent, ingenuity, and knowledge are of no avail." 

~ Peter F Drucker, 'Innovation and Entrepreneurship';

INNOVATION & THE FUTURE

I have found - somewhat belatedly - the following slideshare presentation entitled 'Innovation & the Future' on the net from nouve interplay.

I like one of their catchphrases:

"Things you can envision & describe can actually be built."

which they had also "backed up" with science fiction predictions that came true.

More importantly, their basic strategy approach to "Creating a need that only you can fill", plus the 9-point advisory for innovators (towards the end), are definitely worth exploring.

Innovation and the Future

View more presentations from nouvé.

INTERESTING PERSPECTIVES ABOUT CREATIVITY & INNOVATION FROM GREAT MINDS

"‘Creativity’ is not the miraculous road to business growth and affluence that is so abundantly claimed these days… Those who extol the liberating virtues of corporate creativity… tend to confuse the getting of ideas with their implementation – that is, confuse creativity in the abstract with practical innovation."

~ Theodore Levitt, ‘Creativity Is Not Enough’ in Harvard Business Review (1963);

"Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives... most of the things that are interesting, important, & humans are the results of creativity... when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life."

~ Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi;

"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress & we would be forever repeating the same patterns."

~ Edward de Bono;

"Creativity does not automatically lead to actual innovation... Creativity without a business plan & an organisational structure to administer the plan (i.e. action-oriented follow-through) is meaningless. At best, creative ideas remain good intentions..."

~ Peter F Drucker;

"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practised. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes & their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation, & they need to know & to apply the principles of successful innovation."

~ Peter F Drucker;

So, in the final analysis, creativity is just ideation, which is the generation of new ideas by approaching problems or existing practices in innovative &/or imaginative ways.

Obviously, creativity must eventually link to innovation, which is the process of taking a new idea & turning it into a workable reality or preferably, market offering, to generate value, or usefulness in the case of the former.

Hence, ideation is not synonymous for innovation.

Very often, we tend to use 'Creativity' & 'Innovation' interchangeably. They should not be, because, while creativity involves coming up with new ideas, it is the bringing of the new ideas to life, i.e. action-oriented follow-through, that makes innovation the distinct undertaking it is.

Dilip Mukerjea likes to use his favourite expression to delineate the two: Ideas to Cash!

THE 9 I's OF CREATING YOUR FUTURE

Most people spend more time planning their next vacation than they do planning the rest of their lives.

Yet one of the most powerful paths to creating the future you want is choosing it.

You achieve this by setting out long-term/medium-term/short-term goals based on a compelling personal vision.

Dilip Mukerjea has synthesised a powerful visual planning methodology, which he calls "lifescaping", to show you the entire process of committing to creating, creating a vision, constructing a plan, executing the plan, celebrating your journey, & continue creating your future.

If necessary, he will be most happy to design a one-to-one coaching program with "lifescaping" for you.

Interested readers can write to him at dilipmukerjea@gmail.com for more information about coaching fees & scheduling.

For your information, "lifescaping" synergises all the 9 I's.

For corporations, he has a more enhanced version, which he calls "Strategic Visioning with Lifescaping". It's currently available among the suite of corporate training programs from the Singapore Institute of Management. Here's the link, from which you can download a brochure as well as a registration form.

Nonetheless, Dilip also welcomes requests for any on-site or off-site custom-engineering to suit clients' particular requirements.

A BRILLIANT INNOVATION FROM CHINA: GETTING ON & OFF THE BULLET TRAIN WITHOUT THE TRAIN STOPPING

A good friend of mine, David Tang, who visits China quite regularly, has sent me the above videocast about a very cool concept from China:

It's certainly a brilliant innovation - getting on & off the bullet train without the train stopping.

No time is wasted. The bullet train is moving all the time.

If there are 30 stations between Beijing and Guangzhou, just stopping and accelerating again at each station will waste both energy and time. A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

The passenger at a station embarks onto to a connector cabin way before the train even arrives at the station.

When the train arrives, it will not stop at all. It just slows down to pick up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof of the train.

While the train is still moving away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train's roof.

After fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

When the train arrives at the next station, it will simply drop the whole connector cabin at the station itself and leave it behind at the station.

The outgoing passengers can take their own time to disembark at the station while the train had already left.

At the same time, the train will pick up the incoming embarking passengers on another connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof.

So the train will always drop one connector cabin at the rear of its roof and pick up a new connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof at each station.

My immediate comment is that, if China could conduct a manned spaceflight, build the fastest train in the world - from Wuhan to Guangzhou; next in the works, Beijing to Shanghai - & engineered the largest dam in the world - 'The Three Gorges Dam' - it's only a matter of time that the foregoing concept would become a commercial reality.

ROBERT TUCKER IS COMING TO TOWN!

I have learned from Dilip Mukerjea not too long ago that innovation guru Robert Tucker, also author of 'Winning the Innovation Game' & 'Driving Growth through Innovation', among others, is coming to town. I have already reviewed both books in this weblog as well as the 'Optimum Performance Technologies' weblog.

For more information about what he is doing in town, please proceed to this link.

MY FAVOURITE POSTER FOR THIS WEEK

Readers can read more about it at this link.

10 LESSONS OF INNOVATION

Innovation strategist & marketing expert Idris Mootee, writing in his 'Innovation Playground' weblog, shares his experience from the field through his insightful presentation, '10 Lessons of Innovation':

1) A big part of innovation is about selling, not just inventing;

2) Innovation needs brainstorming & brainstorming needs rules;

[IDEO's Rules: Defer judgement; Build on the ideas of others; Only one conversation at a time; Stay focused on the topic; Encourage wild ideas;]

3) Creativity is not innovation. Innovation is built upon creative assets;

4) There is no clear path or clean solutions;

5) Innovation occurs at the intersection of previously unconnected & unrelated planes of thought;

6) Innovation is like fencing. You need to learn to fight like a gentleman;

[Innovation happens when people respect each other but fight crazy over their ideas.]

7) Innovation requires a few grumpy people;

[They are good at finding flaws & better at pulling the plug & stopping organisations from throwing good money on bad stuff.]

8) Innovation requires its own visual verbal lamguage;

[A picture or sketch speaks a thousand words. Thus, a visual journal allows you to think about your ideas from various angles & fosters clarity of thought.]

9) Prototype a lot; fail often & fail early;

10) Money should never come first;

If you have enjoyed reading this piece, I recommend readers to go to this link to read his other piece, 'Use The Next Six Months To Invest In Innovative Capacity & Strategic Agility'.

I like his Spitfire analogy for speed & agility - it reminds me of the great war movie 'Battle of Britain' in the sixties.

HOW MUCH OF INNOVATION IS INSPIRATION & HOW MUCH IS HARD WORK?

According to management guru Peter Drucker, the answer to the foregoing question lies somewhere in the middle.

Nonetheless, he had added this brilliant observation or insight:

"But when all is said & done, what innovation requires is hard work: focused, purposeful work. If diligence, persistence & commitment are lacking, talent, ingenuity & knowledge are of no avail."

In a nut shell, successful innovation does require inspiration. But that's barely half of the equation. It also requires discipline: rigorous, systematic way to bring good ideas to profitable fruition.

Of course, balancing the inspiration/hardwork equation isn't going to be easy.

THE CRUX BETWEEN CREATIVITY & INNOVATION

I have stumbled upon the following interesting insight attributed to Hugh MacLeod of the 'Gaping Void' weblog:

"One of the buzzwords you hear a lot in the business world these days, is “Innovation”. Yes, it’s a genuinely worthy thing to aspire to. Genuine innovation creates lots of genuine value, every young intern knows this. Which is why people like to throw it around like confetti. It’s one of those words that sound good in meetings, regardless of how serious one is about ACTUALLY innovating ANYTHING.

Here’s some friendly advice for all you Innovation-buzzword fanboys:

You don’t get to be more innovative, until you make yourself more creative FIRST.

“Innovative” is an “external” word. It can be measured. It generally talks about things that have been tested properly and found to have worked in the real world.

“Creative”, however, is more of an “internal” word. It’s subjective, it’s murkier. It’s far harder to measure, it’s far harder to define. It’s an inward journey, not outward. Which is why a lot of people in business try to keep the word out of their official lexicon, preferring instead more neutral, more externally-focused language like “Value”, “Excellence”, “Quality” and yes, “Innovation”."

You can read the rest of it - plus many diverse viewpoints from readers - at this link to the 'Lateral Action' weblog.

CATS & YOUR POWER OF INNOVATION, VISUALLY SPEAKING

I told Dilip Mukerjea just a few days ago about the new book by Dr Stephen Lundin, entitled 'CATS: The Nine Lives of Innovation'. Dr Lundin is co-author of the bestselling Fish! series of business titles.

Last night, with the aid of his repertoire of Adobe softwares, Dilip has created a wonderful map of the key ideas from the book as shown above.

Personally, I have yet to read the book, but I have read several articles on the net [Readers can go to this link to read &/or download one of them] about the topic.

Nonetheless, in a nut shell, the author delineates four obstacles that limit creativity in all kinds of environments:

- negative feedback;
- habit;
- fear; &
- failure of leadership;

He then describes nine techniques for overcoming those obstacles, which include organizing, understanding creativity & the power of provocation.

[More information about the author & other stuff can be found at this link.]

INNOVATE OR INCINERATE IN TODAY'S WARP-SPEED MARKETSPACE

Better! Faster! Cheaper! The chant of the marketspace!

Earnings have become less predictable. The challenge is how to reconcile unpredictable earnings with predictable bills. Hard work is no guarantor of future security. No pundit, preacher, or politician can predict with any precision about profits, performance, and productivity. Income used to be directly proportional to rank and seniority.

Now you’re paid for your ideas and your ability to inform, communicate, and entertain – so that you sell!

A Financial Times investigation covering an eighteen months timespan from January 2001 has shown that the directors and executives of the 25 largest US companies to go bankrupt in this period managed to amass a US$3.3 billion fortune between them – in horrid contrast to their companies, their employees, and the millions of shareholders that lost all their investments in them. A mere 52 individuals emerged with US$2.95 billion in remuneration shortly before their businesses went bust – 89 per cent of the total!

Some of the huge entities guilty of previously unimaginable corporate scandals were WorldCom, Enron, and Arthur Andersen, to mention just a few. Of course, the personalities of such creative chicanery are now confronted with financial bankruptcy.

In this new learning economy, success equates most with connections, relationships, alliances, talent, creative ingenuity, continuous innovation, and the ability to project ourselves into the ever-contracting attention span of potential customers. Inventiveness and empathy are needed to remain in contention.

In the corporate ecosystem, selling out was once a stigma; now, the worst scenario is when you’re not selling! Net worth and self-worth are generally poles apart; in today’s frenetic marketspace, they meet on equal terms when your personality has become a marketable commodity so that it sells successfully.

Creative ingenuity enables you to nichecraft; it helps you to blaze your own career path and make a reputation in your field, not just in your organisation. Promotion comes from promoting yourself. Entrepreneurship has morphed into multipreneurship, and the new individual has to become an intricate web containing several different nodes of expertise. Demand for ingenious innovators is outrunning supply. Electronic communities and coalitions are coordinating themselves via the Internet.

Constantly morphing constellations of diverse disciplines, such as researchers, designers, manufacturers, financial specialists, marketers, shippers, and many others, are merging into conglomerates that function as if they were a single enterprise – only to disband once their united aims are achieved, to form fresh coalitions of creative collaboration.

Are you in? Are you out ? Choose. And act!

The clarion call of innovation has forced large organisations to rip out entire bureaucracies – replacing middle management with computer software to streamline activities such as billing, procurement, and inventory; leveraging the Internet for customer services, auctioning,sales, and advertising; and renting space and equipment instead of purchasing them.

In many instances, bricks and mortar have been extinguished, rapidly replaced by brains and wits!

Continuous innovation emerges from continual learning, much of which is informal, unplanned,serendipitous. These outputs shape outcomes when technical insights merge with marketing imagination. Intangible value from innovations has surpassed tangible value from the creations of these innovations.

When, for example, buyers purchase a compact disc, some medication, or a transistor, they are paying the bulk of the price tag for researching, designing, marketing, and advertising; the raw cost of the products themselves is a mere few cents in each case.

How are YOU capitalising on innovation?

Here is another choice for you: Innovate or Abdicate!

[Excerpted from the 'Catalysing Creativity' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

Posting the foregoing essay by Dilip Mukerjea - & rereading it - reminds me of our earlier conversation in his car, while travelling together to visit his printer in the Tuas area some time ago, during which I have mentioned about a wonderful book I have read, entitled 'Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility will help you Stay Ahead of the Game'.

I have then shared with Dilip a particular comment made by the two consultants-authors, Yves Doz & Mikko Kosonen, of the book:

"Companies are often the victims of their own success. They die not because what they did was wrong, but rather they kept doing it for too long."

It resonates with what Dilip has so eloquently written.

From my perspective, to succeed - and thrive - in an environment of disruptive change, we will have to be more versatile, more ready than ever to anticipate and adapt. I have mentioned this point in an earlier post.

Creativity &/or innovation, as argued by Dilip Mukerjea, is just one avenue. We also have to stay agile & remain nimble, mentally as well as physically.

With greater creativity, versatility and agility, I reckon we can have more options to deal with a rapidly-changing, discontinuously disruptive marketspace.

THE INNOVATION CYCLE

How much time do you spend every day on:

INERTIA

IMITATION

INSTRUCTION

INNOVATION

As shown, the attributes of innovation are:

INTELLIGENCE ~ we all have it, yet, to paraphrase Howard Gardner: "The issue is not how smart you are, but how are you smart?"

INFORMATION ~ we are assaulted by an avalanche of data, that metamorphose into information, which, after some time, assumes the guise of knowledge, and ultimately, adorns our psyche as wisdom.

INTUITION ~ this is the superlogic of our senses, indisputably vital in idea generation.

IMAGINATION ~ the software of our minds, the offspring of our souls. Who you ‘see’ is who you’ll be.

Yet, considering a typical day in our lives, how much time do we spend on innovation? Much of it goes into one of these three default modes:

INERTIA ~ doing the same thing repetitiously

IMITATION ~ copying (a natural learning device), by following how others do something

INSTRUCTION ~ receiving guidance from others in doing something

None of these three characteristics are unnecessary in our daily lives, unless they come at the expense of innovation. In being able to problem-solve, dispense ideas, and inspire mprovements, I suggest we need to spend at least 25 percent of our time on innovation. This would keep our neurons active ~ after all, thinking is an athletic activity, and a creative thinker is a ‘mental’ athlete.

Beware of these common causes of failure within corporate innovation processes:

1. Fuzzy goal definition

2. Misalignment of actions to goals

3. Poor participation in teams

4. Inexpert monitoring of results

5. Faulty communication and poor access to information

[Excerpted from the 'Igniting Innovation' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

FOCUS ON INNOVATION

“Every organisation ~ not just business ~ needs one competence: INNOVATION. And every organisation needs a way to record and appraise its innovative performance.”

~ Peter Drucker, Corporate Genius and Sage of the Business World

Innovation results when creativity is extended and amplified. Through this, the final product emerges, or the process is improved. This effort must have a significant impact on an individual,a group, an organisation, an industry, or a society.

There are four principal types of innovation that result from the creative process. These can be summarised as follows:

PRODUCT INNOVATION ~ an enhancement to a physical product or service.

PROCESS INNOVATION ~ an improvement in a process that results in better efficiency and/or effectiveness.

MARKETING INNOVATION ~ a fresh, novel, new marketing concept or application.

MANAGEMENT INNOVATION ~ an original or unique improvement in management practice.

“We have to be willing to cannibalise what we’re doing today in order to ensure our leadership in the future. It’s counter to human nature, but you have to kill your business while it is still working.”

~ Lewis Platt, CEO, Hewlett-Packard

Innovation cannot take place in isolation; it should be in real time, a conveyor belt of ideas that constantly translates into value. The Third Millennium will witness a serious shortage of several resources. Just three of these are fresh water, electrical energy, and skilled human capital. With competition increasing dramatically, and the shift to brainpower-based industries, the need for innovation is paramount.

In order to match the challenges of an innovative planet, several forward-thinking organisations have established crossfunctional teams, with representatives from diverse disciplines: technical, finance, design, operations, marketing, and personnel.

Furthermore, in this age of ‘intimacy marketing,’ customers are teaming up with suppliers, and the middlemen. Their coordinated efforts facilitate innovation and enhance value for all parties. The thought process, alone, or in tandem with action, is a function of creativity.

Innovation occurs when ideas become useful. Creativity precedes innovation; it is a behaviour, whereas innovation is a process. Creativity is the stimulus that animates innovation.

Generally speaking, creativity occurs via individual effort, and innovation through group effort.

Innovation is the pay-off, but it will not germinate unless the seeds of creativity have been planted into a fertile, receptive culture for ideas to blossom.

[Excerpted from the 'Igniting Innovation' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

IS 'PIGGYBACKING' A TRULY CREATIVE INITIATIVE?

Actually, my first impression of 'piggybacking' is the picture of a NASA space shuttle 'piggybacking' on top of a Boeing 747 cargo plane, which I have seen many many years ago.

Well, for the purpose of this post, 'piggybacking' is also a term commonly used in the field of creativity & innovation to describe a creative initiative, whereby one rides on the ideas of other people, or from other disciplines, to come up with a new &/or better idea, especially during a brainstorming exercise.

Tactically, 'piggybacking' is combining, modifying & expanding other people's ideas. 'Hitch-hiking' is apparently another similar term often used to describe the process. Overall, it is based on the concept that ideas build on ideas.

In other words, riding or "standing on the shoulders of giants", to paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton.

Come to think of it, this implies what the 'Book of Ecclesiastes' had said centuries ago that "there is no new thing under the sun" rings true.

Many creativity experts have in fact argued that:

- all ideas are evolutions of previous concepts, or conceptual combinations;

- creativity is cumulative & incremental;

- creativity can be defined as recombination: it is the creation of something new from the combination of elements that have previously existed;

- innovations today are always combinations of previous ideas, products that are already out there, being used every day;

In the book, 'How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines', professor emeritus John Lienhard explains how major creations like the steam engine, the airplane & the printing press came about.

In virtually every case, the credited inventor built on many ideas preceding his own. To some degree, the author says, an invention is the product of group intelligence.

He posits that the quest for a single canonical inventor of a new technology is illusory, because all inventions are the sum of many contributions.

As a matter of fact, business scholar Richard Ogle, writing in his fascinating book, 'Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity & the New Science of Ideas', reaffirms this interesting nugget:

Originally, Xerox's research team had a crackerpot PC design, but it was a tiny rival Apple, thanks to the two wonderful Steves, who were better plugged into the critical hobbyist world, which in turn triggered the PC goldmine.

According to the author, some inventors succeed not by inventing from scratch, but by using lots of established ideas & then pushing that knowledge into a new direction that leads to a major discovery.

I certainly like his principal premise in the provocative book: the source of creativity lies "out there," in the network of connections between people and ideas.

The key resides in what he calls "idea-spaces," a set of nodes in a network of people (and their ideas) that cohere and take on a distinctive set of characteristics leading to the generation of breakthrough ideas, e.g. the amazing scientific discovery of Watson & Crick, as well as the Gutenberg press, among many others.

A couple of weeks ago, I have read an interesting blog-post (possibly by innovation strategist Keith Sawyer) about Dr Chi-mao Hsieh, a professor at the Missouri University of Science & Technology who has figured out a way to measure the relatedness of all the component ideas in a new idea by researching the inventory of patents.

His findings:

- the most successful patents have an intermediate degree of relatedness;

- patents that cite more other patents are most successful;

Interestingly, industry watcher & technology strategist Patricia Seybold has revealed in her inspiring book, 'Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future', about the phenomenon of "outside innovation", whereby the most innovative companies are now using lead customers, partners, suppliers, universities, contract labs & other sources outside the company to jointly develop new products or technologies.

She has also maintained that internal R & D departments of these companies are being redeployed to scout for new products & technologies in the marketspace, including overseas.

Undoubtedly, at least from the standpoint of 'piggybacking', Mother Nature - a logical playground of ideas - has been modern technology & engineering's greatest teacher. Please read my earlier post in the 'Optimum Performance Technologies' weblog.

So, in a nut shell, & considering most of today's modern conveniences, which have their origins or connections to 12,000 years of ancient history, based on the exploratory work of scholar & documentary producer James Burke, 'piggybacking' is a truly creative initiative.

[Please peruse his wonderful book, 'Connections from Ptolemy's Astrolabe to the Discovery of Electricity: How Inventions are Linked & How They Cause Change throughout History', or better still, get hold of & watch his entire collections of DVDs.]

By the way, to help you build your concepts while brainstorming, I like to offer this wonderful tip from creative director Robert Pratt:

"Don’t be afraid to piggyback off ideas that, for the moment, don’t seem to have anything to do with your problem. Sometimes hitchhiking off an unrelated concept may lead a winding productive path right back to your original destination, or an even better destination than you originally intended. Remember, your idea should be pliable at this point. Nothing is engraved in stone."

[to be continued in the Next Post. I will share my personal observations of 'piggybacking' in the movie industry, from which action movies are a pet subject of mine.]

THE TOP 30 INNOVATIONS OF THE LAST 30 YEARS

If you are wondering about what are the innovations that have changed the way life we have lived & the way we have done business since the late seventies, here's a link to a Photo Gallery (slide-show)/Videos on the PBS/Nightly Business Report in conjunction with Knowledge@Wharton, where you can access 'The Top 30 Innovations of the last 30 Years'.

[This lead came from my younger brother who is a techno-geek.]

REINVENTION: REDEVELOPING & SUSTAINING INNOVATIVE CAPABILITY

I am rather intrigued by the following definition of "the world's most innovative company":

"In my mind, an innovative company does more than exploit a single idea. It develops the systematic ability to extend into new markets, and create entirely new business models. And importantly, it doesn't just invent new things; it makes money with its new efforts."

It came from Scott Anthony, President of Innosight, an innovation consulting and investing company with offices in Massachusetts, Singapore, & India, writing in the latest issue 'Harvard Business Innovation Insights'.

He is also the lead author on 'The Innovator’s Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work' and co-author (with Harvard professor Clayton Christensen) of 'Seeing What’s Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change'.

In line with his definition, he has voted Amazon as "the world's most innovative company".

This is his argument:

"It's because Amazon has demonstrated a rare ability to execute seamlessly in its core business while moving into new businesses . . .

At the beginning of the decade, Amazon was a retailer that mostly sold books. Today it sells a diverse range of products, subscription services (Amazon Prime), hosts third-party retailers, products (Kindle), and Web services. That, to me, is an innovative company."

He has also recognised Apple, Cisco, General Electric, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Nokia, 3M, Disney, Johnson & Johnson as innovative companies, but he doesn't think that Google fits the bill, not even as one of the world's five most innovative companies.

His point about Google:

"It has an insanely great core business, and does a masterful job exploiting that business. And it's clearly highly inventive, flinging new products onto the market seemingly every day. Yet ... one estimate suggests that 97 percent of its revenues come from its core business."

It seems to me that Scott Anthony's qualifying criterium is 'RE-INVENTION as a relentless process in redeveloping and sustaining innovative capability', as I read it from his parting shot:

"Doing it once is nice. Doing it again is better. Doing something completely differently, again and again ... well that's what makes you one of the world's most innovative companies."

I reckon the same thinking also readily applies in our own personal as well as professional lives, especially in today's context.

Food for serious thought. There are in fact many valuable lessons we can draw from the Amazon experience in a personal application.

800+ BEST WEBSITES ON CREATIVITY & INNOVATION

Here's the main link to 800+ of the best websites on the web about creativity & innovation, apparently compiled by CREAX, a Belgium-based innovation consultancy, which also functions as a Patent & TRIZ-based research organisation.

Be forewarned: some links are broken!

By the way, Dilip Mukerjea's Braindancing outfit is listed too.

One last thing before I go:

If you are curious to find out how creative you are, comparing with over 100.000 people out in the world, here's the link to participate in CREAX's creativity self-assessment, with 40 questions that profile your level of creativity in eight areas: abstraction, connection, perspective, curiosity, boldness, paradox, complexity & persistence.

Give it a go, just for the fun of it!

MAKING DISTINCTIONS: CREATIVITY vs INNOVATION IV

[continued from the Last Post.]

I take this opportunity to share the following easy-to-understand definitions from Gerald Haman, the creative brain behind the award-winning KnowBrainer & innovation tools:

[He is also the founder of SolutionPeople®, developer of the Chicago Thinkubator®, adjunct professor of innovation at Northwestern University, editor of InnovatorsDigest.com and creator of the InnovationToolofTheMonthClub.com. He is recognized by clients as “Solutionman”, because of his ability to quickly help people develop breakthrough solutions.]

"CREATIVITY

is developing

new, interesting, or different

IDEAS"

"INNOVATION

is the process of transforming creative ideas into

valuable or profitable

SOLUTIONS"

Creative Ideas Provide Energy for Innovative Solutions!

It appears that many people are more comfortable talking about innovation than creativity. Their discomfort in talking about creativity may be rooted in the perception that that creativity is just fun and games. However, creativity is necessary for innovation to occur.

Creative thinking yields the ideas that fill the pipeline of innovation. Innovation cannot happen without the energy generated by creativity.

Haman's definition also has makes a subtle, yet important distinction between IDEAS and SOLUTIONS.

Creativity produces the ideas and once they yield value or profit, they become solutions.

Below is Haman's other "creative" definition to help people define the relationship between creativity and innovation.

"Innovation is how people make money

or create value from creativity"

[to be continued in the Next Post.

Way back in the nineties, I had used the Pocket Innovator, the precursor to the KnowBrainer innovation tool, from Gerald Haman. In fact, I was also one of his retailers in this part of the world during that period. Naturally, I also own the first generation of the KnowBrainer, in addition to The Persuasive Advantage, a creative marketing planning tool.]

MAKING DISTINCTIONS: CREATIVITY vs INNOVATION III

[continued from the Last Post.]

I am taking the liberty of extracting a beautiful piece of writing - to illustrate the distinction between 'creativity' & 'innovation' - from an interesting article, 'The Essence of Creativity: A Creative Definition of Creativity', by Jason Cangialosi, a free-lance creator & ghost-writer of books, articles & screenplays, based in Denver, Colorado:

". . . Not all that exists is creative; most of life is redundant and we as a species relish in the routine of predictability.

This is also where the difference between creativity and innovation resides, as creativity is the origin of new ideas and innovation is the act of applying them.

It is the moments of creativity that there is an evolution in humankind's constant recycling of innovation .

We may all have creative potential, just as we can all ask the question, "why"? Yet, it is in the answers to "why" that creativity is kindled, and innovation is answer to the question "how?".

I love what he has written, especially his acronym for 'Creativity', with the symbolic analogy of the whale ". . . so as it swims to the innermost depths of the oceans and then explodes to the surface. Creativity empowers that ability in us; to look deep inside and then reach out with explosive forces in what we have found.":

Controlled
Release
Entering
All
Time's
Inner
Visions
Inspired
To
You

Here's the link to the original article.

[to be continued in the Next Post.]