Is Innovation Over?
August 2, 2006
In today’s fast-paced and competitive world, some might argue that the term "innovation" has become overused or cliché. A firm believer in the value of constant change and improvement, I enjoyed a recent opinion piece in BusinessWeek that upholds the value of innovation, and makes a claim that it does not have to become, "the latest overused buzzword". This article discusses a new book, Innovation: the Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want, in which the author evaluates the need to apply firm discipline in order to enact meaningful innovation.
The book offers a testimonial for an organized and iterative approach to finding success, more specifically, "to create common practices and processes for all business units, to encourage teaming, and make everything more quantifiable". By holding regular "watering hole" brainstorm sessions, corporate thinkers are able to continually revisit old ideas as they simultaneously construct new ones. The author emphasizes the significance of this repetitive, formulaic, and cyclical method, saying, "from iterations of these kinds, great big ideas could come to fruition".
In the Change Agent paper, Priscilla Guthrie, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, discusses the iterative approach used in writing CONOPS. Her suggestions to change agents resonate with the emphasis of this article, especially when she says, "... we’ve learned to talk about spiral development in CONOPS because it’s difficult to predict how large environments are going to behave... We need to adopt a more adaptive approach and get away from the ‘tyranny’ of the predicative... ".
Both the business world and the government could benefit from this book. Innovation will live on as an invaluable asset to any company or organization looking to stay on top of their game, and ahead of the rest.
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