What is an Innovation?
“An innovation is a new solution to an existing or new problem, which is accepted and used in a market or similar field”
~Alf Rehn~
Why would anyone need to answer the question what an innovation is?
For you it is probably not important to come up with a definition, but when you give examples on innovations, you can test the definition above: do your examples fit into the definition, or the other way around – does the definition cover your innovations?
You might end up with a question like: the television was a great invention, but I can’t tell what problem that invention solved.
The word problem in the definition does not necessarily mean what we in everyday language understand by a problem. A problem can also be something we did not know was a problem! In the quotation this kind are called “new problems”. To begin with, it probably was no problem to get up from the sofa and go to the TV set to change channel, but the remote control is a nice invention anyway.
Nowadays though, with hundreds of channels – or programs – to choose from, it would be painful to browse the programs without a remote! Thus, many innovations, like the ones in the picture here, make us appreciate the solutions, even though we maybe had not realised there was a problem in the first place.
Since innovating is crucial for organisations, you might be reading this because you want to develop your organisation’s offerings, be it services or products or something else. Brainstorming is a common way of beginning to work with innovations. There are plenty of methods for working with brainstorming or product refinement, some of which you can find in this tool. Below you find questions that might help you work further with the ideas you have come up with. Try your ideas against the questions. The questions are not a test set, but their purpose is more inspirational and discussion opening.
Inspiration for Discussions
1. What have some of the most important innovations in history been?
2 . What can make a good invention fail as an innovation?
3 . What’s the most crucial competency for innovating successfully? (Reference: Rehn)
4 . Is it always possible to know what an invention will be used for? Watch the animation and get inspired.
Innovation Types
When you plan and prepare for your holiday, you probably use several different types of innovations.
You book a flight over the web. You pay the flight using a credit card, possibly confirming the payment with your net bank. You will, by e-mail, receive a booking number, or a link, to your flight details, and you will, when time comes, confirm your booking and check-in on line.
Products and/or Services
The computer – or its components – that you used for booking, was an example of product innovation. In this pie chart you see into which fields maritime industry patents can be divided. Product innovations are often patented.
You might have booked your flight using a middleman, formerly known as a travel agency. Today the middleman in many cases is a service provider on a website. The provider buys (or books) the flights from a producer and sells it to you, the consumer. The service on the website was a service innovation.
Processes and/or Systems
Product innovations and service innovations are visible to the customer. Process innovations can be visible or not visible for the customer. For example, the way in which you get your suitcase into the airplane is a process. The process changed when bar codes and scanning systems enabled the passengers themselves to drop in their luggage at airports instead of having airline personnel do it for them. A (visible) process innovation had been made. But of course, the data-traffic is not visible. The same innovation(s) can be a process innovation and a product innovation, depending on the perspective.
The luggage-process innovation was made possible by technological innovations (scanners, printers, “the bar code – code” etc.) and other process innovations, e.g. making it possible to ensure the identity of the person checking in the luggage.
When different processes and technologies are put together creating a new way of reaching a goal – e.g. moving your luggage from your home to your destination – it could be called a systems/systemic innovation. Also other kinds of innovations could be named. In this graphic you see some of them.
Inspiration for Discussions and Reflection
Which type of innovation are you most familiar with? Which types are you working with? What would be an example of a new type of innovation for your organisation?
Example:
If you are a nightstand manufacturer, you probably work with incremental product innovating. Moving to another field of innovating could e.g. be to begin producing night stands that serve as water-mist fire-extinguishers. To put the two features together would connect two different systems, i.e. the fire safety system and the bedroom interior design system.
Introducing night stands with this extra feature, would require changing both systems (compare: systems innovation) and could possibly also be a business model innovation. As part of that, the innovation audience changes.
An example of taking different innovation audiences into account is shown in the animation on different user groups for a pen.
Business Model Innovation
There are many ways to describe business models. Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas is a popular way of arranging questions an organisation can work with. Simplifying a lot, the goal with business model innovation is to develop new value creation ways, i.e. to get customers for new ways of delivering a service or product, or for a new way of charging for them.
The questions above can be discussed separately or together. Changes in a company’s activities in one of the nine elements may result in new business opportunities, or innovations!
Inspiration for Discussions and Reflection
Using the questions presented above, you can develop own examples and ideas, maybe for your own organisation:
A construction company in northern Europe might find that their biggest expense is the raw material for thermal insulation (mineral wool, fiberglass etc). Finding a cheaper raw material would increase the company’s revenue. The cheapest raw material they can think of is water, available for free. The construction company thus begins insulating their houses with ice, basically building huge igloos around their houses. When warmer, the ice melts, but insulation is not needed during summer.
Developments in technology can boost changes when choosing whom to try to sell to. One idea that has been realised, is constructing ice breakers so that they can be used in the off-shore business when there is no ice to be broken. Another example could be moving from more focused to less focused segments: maybe a school kitchen could sell dinner for elderly people?
