Courses/Ingenuity 601/Innolution/Innovation

From Wikipedia mostly

• innovation vs. invention: invention is first occurrence of idea for new product/process, innovation is first attempt to realize it (or the first successful realization, depending on how you want to view it)
• innovation applies to products, processes, positions, paradigms, services, organization structures, raw material sources, markets, etc.
• innovation causes significant change/disruption, is not small improvement (can be large improvement); it can be destructive to those who are not prepared (i.e., not innovative or innovative enough)
• innovation is essential to growth
• innovation involves creativity, therefore creative people, but creativity and creative are not sufficient for something to be considered innovative, it must be implemented
• innovation can be seen as problem creation, instead of problem solution
• innovators often share many characteristics, including interest in many disciplines (more from Stephanie, Matthew)
• incremental innovation vs. disruptive/radical innovation: incremental is on technology trajectory with little uncertainty; disruptive is not planned for, involves a lot of uncertainty and risk, but also potentially huge rewards, is often controversial or questioned as to its innovativeness; sometimes line between the two is blurred
• disruptive vs. sustaining innovation: sustaining allows organizations to approach the market in the same way; disruptive does not and established firms may be less likely to adopt the innovation because of losing a market or profits (e.g.., due to lower profit margin), thus allowing small firms new opportunity
• 2 levels of innovation important at an industry or economy level: new technological systems (systemic innovations) may give rise to new industrial sector; technological revolutions or new techno-economic paradigms involve clusters of innovations that can change the whole economy
• Scientific push vs. market pull to drive innovation; actually most successful innovation involves both; also involves intermediaries like consultants and standards bodies
• Innovation in business models need frequent experimentation to test markets
• (Everett Rogers) innovation life cycle follows S-curve (on growth vs. time graph) with induction period, rapid growth, and slow growth or even decline; replace old innovation with a new one that has a better S-curve
• Goal is org is not necessarily new product development; oftentimes it’s not; to achieve goals through innovation, the investment is average of 4% of turnover
• Most innovations fail (great reward, great risk); failures help the org to learn, but too much is detrimental; failure can be from external or internal causes, and can be within innovation process itself through poor goal definition, poor alignment of actions to goals, poor participation in teams, poor monitoring of results, or poor communication and access to information
• Organization needs to enable innovation and to enact (recognize, develop, apply, adopt) it through individuals; need structured process to allow it to happen effectively
• Measures of innovation defined in Oslo Manual, EU Lisbon Strategy (3% of GNP for example)
• Public awareness of innovation is important in innovation process; communication important; need journalists skilled in communicating technologies to the public
• Diff between science fiction and science reality is often not lack of imagination, but lack of technology; ideas/curiosity can spawn the creation of new technologies
• Innovation often requires expertise in order to be competitive
• Innovators challenge status quo, mainstream thinking

From PRIME report

http://primeottawa.ca/publications/pub_files/02-08%20FOR%20PRIME%20WEB.doc

• Knowledge production now increasing multidisciplinary and involving networks and many people (not a lone ‘heroic’ inventor) from different places (geographically, and public/private sector) working together; note also “hyphen” technologies and compound terms, e.g., electro-optics, biosensors, which challenge traditional boundaries of knowledge
• Renaissance leaders were masters in many different areas simultaneously (think Leonardo da Vinci); modern times have seen increasing specialization and therefore each person can only “master a tiny fragment of human creativity”
• Intellectual property now increasing important over physical property; it can be hindrance to research but also important income source for research organizations
• Governance is important is allowing R&D to create wealth, i.e., how governments manage innovation; need more integrated and coordinated approach among different departments, units to achieve goals that are common to all and to address overarching societal problems such as climate change
• As part of their innovation policy, government should get more involved in new, multidisciplinary fields (e.g., nanotechnology) where risk and upfront costs to business is too much

From thinksmart.com

• Innovation is people implementing ideas that create new value
• Organizational innovation happens in a context of customers, suppliers, competitors, government, world events, communities and families
• Organizational culture needs to promote innovation in order for it to happen: empowering, flexible, welcomes ideas, tolerates risk, celebrates success, fosters synergy, encourages fun; four main components of this culture are leadership, people, basic values, and innovation values
• Innovation drivers are ideas, change, passion, and trends
• Outcomes of innovation are renewal, change, reinvention, trends—these propel the organization into a new cycle of innovation
• 7 C’s of innovation: challenge, customer focus, creativity, communication, collaboration, completion, contemplation
• “Nothing more risky than not innovating, with the possible exception of confusing innovation with something that fails to create value”