Innovation

Innovation: noun, meaning – ‘a new method, idea, product, etc.’

History loves to associate Innovation with individuals – who invented the Light bulb, the Computer or the Telephone? Google these and you will get the name of a person. The reality is rather different. Dig deeper and you will find many people involved at various stages, each building on many years and individuals previous work. Thomas Edison, credited with the invention of the incandescent light bulb actually worked with a large team of assistants, all playing a role to varying degrees. Innovation it would seem then is a team sport.
Innovation can be split largely into two areas;

Incremental Innovation

Take the current annual releases of smart phones. Each new release improves or adds a small feature to the already existing feature set. A better camera, a larger or bright screen etc.
Same with the Operating System, an improvement in performance or a tweak here and there. Then there will be new features, building on top of existing ones that have gone before.
This type of innovation comes from specialising in a particular domain. Researching and probing ever deeper to understand exactly what can be tweaked and improved over time. Usually many like-minded people working to a common goal.

Recombinant Innovation

Recombinant Innovation is the concept of taking multiple ideas from different areas and mashing them together. One good example of this was the release of the iPhone in 2007.
It took a phone, a music player and an internet browser and combined them together into a single device. Since then you could argue that the iPhone is now firmly in the incremental innovation category.
Unlike incremental innovation, this type of innovation strongly benefits from diversity of ideas and people. The more diverse the group, the better chance of coming up with something new or a fresh approach. Many products of this type of innovation are due to people involved in two completely separate domains that suddenly see a bridge between the two, that would never be possible when isolated in a single area.

Challenge the Status Quo

When you are deeply involved in an area it can be hard to come up with a new approach, as there can be many deep set assumptions and biases in your thinking. Sometime you have to take a step back, look from a higher perspective and say ‘Why do we do it this way?’ and then ‘What would happen if we didn’t do that?’ – These types of questions, (one might call Blue Sky thinking), can help come up with alternatives that were never in the forefront of your mind before.

This post was inspired from a book I am reading. ‘Rebel Ideas’ by Matthew Syed. This is an excellent book on diverse thinking, I fully recommend it.