Innovation Is (Un)Changing
Jun 13 2007 by Randy J. Hunt
My suite-mate Ryan held up this week’s delivery of Businessweek. “Innovation” is the only word in their vocabulary.” I had to laugh. I’m sure a number of their readers, even occasional ones, have thought the same.
“Innovation” has always been a word I’ve struggled with. Long before the innovation-everything frenzy, I got all tripped up when I read a marketing piece from a large consulting firm that espoused design as innovation. I can’t argue with the sentiment. Design is innovative right? Creativity too? Innovation sounds so…good. Who wouldn’t want to be inventive and new?
The problem lies in this mapping of design (still a word that is difficult to define) to innovation (even more difficult to define). This is akin to stating that emotion is spirituality or thought is truth. Such metaphors are the fuel of theoretical exploration, for which admittedly I have a liking, but they are not for making a legitimate and coherent arguments in your firm’s self-promotion or much less in dominant business press.
In Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle he posits, “Innovation is ever present in the production of things. This is not true of consumption, which is never anything but more of the same.”
I’m not sure I get innovation. I get design.
Florence Haridan Jun 19 2007 at 11:37 pm
Innovation – Design. For me, when I think of the connection between these two thoughts, I am led to the notion of design thinking leads to innovation. Design thinking is, in my mind a way to approach problems, information, situations. It is about the questions of Why is it that way? Can it be changed, evolved to make it better, more effeicient, easier to understand, easier to navigate. Can I make a change a twee, that will allow for me to think less to use it? Enjoy the experience more?
I led the User Experience team at Citbank for many years. There were a bunch of bankers trying to get into the mindframe of innovation, yet they hardly even knew how to ask why? How? Who. All they really wanted to ask is When? How much?
These days as a business coach, I am often asked by my customers to faciltate innovation sessions. I always ask them to include there design teams and I am so often questioned why them? they just design…It amazes me that there is still a disconnect to what really allows inovation to flow. simply, allowing creativity to be present…my 2¢. Florence
Randy Jun 20 2007 at 1:11 am
Florence,
Thanks for your thoughts. It’s a cliché but true, Your fresh eyes are what I needed.
The distinction you make is deceptively simple, but wholly true. Design is a process(or state of mind) and innovation is a possible outcome of that process.