Courses/Ingenuity 601/Innolution/Innovators

• A 2005/6 MIT survey of innovation in technology found a number of characteristics common to innovators working in that field.
  • they are not troubled by the idea of failure,
  • they realise that failure can be learned from and that the 'failed' technology can later be re-used for other purposes,
  • they know innovation requires that one works in advanced areas where failure is a real possibility,
  • innovators are curious about what is happening in a myriad of disciplines, not only their own specialism,
  • innovators are open to third-party experiments with their products,
  • they recognize that a useful innovation must be "robust", flexible and adaptable,
  • innovators delight in spotting a need that we don't even know we harbor, and then fulfilling that need with a new innovation, and as such
  • innovators like to make products that are immediately useful to their first users.

• Clayton Christensen: "You don't change a company by giving them ideas. You change them by training them to think a different way."

• Acro Logic: Define: Innovation & Innovator

• Quote: "Let us do something new"
• Inputs: Idea or discovery + Plan + Implementation resources
• Outputs: New product or process + Risk + Benefit + Impact
• Commentary: Innovation is a process, and the "innovator" is often an organisation of people providing a diverse range of complementary skills and knowledge. Consequently, it is rare for just one individual to be an innovator. Innovation always comes with a potential risk and it is the responsibility of the innovators to assess and manage that risk. Innovation aims to introduce new benefits, which exceed those available from current "best practice". Innovation also introduces some degree of new, and possibly unforeseen, impact on the innovative organisation and others.