Innovation

Innovation is about thinking differently, acting differently, delivering differently, or adding value differently.

Innovation happens anywhere in an open environment, with ecosystem involvement. The progress of the world is pushed forward by a select few who are applying vision, expertise, and techniques, using broad and diverse skills to create “the art of possible.” 

Innovation management is not a thing or even a state, but a management process of lining up the culture of change in pursuit of alternative ways to do things or experimenting in a new approach to solve problems.

Innovation & comprehensiveness: Innovation has a very low success rate due to un-conventionalism and high risk. Many business innovation efforts are symptomatic of not having a comprehensive understanding and taking stepwise approaches. Once you have a comprehensive vision of the system, its characteristics and dynamics, refine data into comprehensive information and knowledge abundance, organizations become more informative for capturing emerging business opportunities to innovate, prevent risks, and deal with innovation intensity in a structural way.

For many business leaders and professionals, there is no surprise that they will see the mixed picture of “old and new” in the organization, from the mindset, business model, process or practice perspectives, make decisions based on opening up with diverse viewpoint, careful and comprehensive analysis and synthesis, get input from a broad range of personalities and cognitive difference of people, keep things on track to ensure that processes, expenditure of time, money, energy and assignments of resources should be used wisely.

Innovation & circumstances: In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, the problems become over-complex and interconnected. Innovation often has a lot to do with external circumstances, but people tend to focus on internal circumstances. Thinking creatively about a problem requires being close to the problem, understanding context and intangible variables, seeing things from different angles to gain different perspectives, connecting dots to shape fresh views or new concepts, and catalyzing innovation smoothly.

Problem-solving is circumstantial. Sometimes, circumstances have already changed a long time ago. For either solving existing or emerging problems, always be careful about examining the potential points of engagement, rather than jumping to the “we'll fix this" mentality. Always challenge your own thinking or conventional wisdom by asking questions which often lead to discovering situations others do not see at first, create multiple pathways to figure out alternative solutions. Unlike restricted rules, conventional wisdom fitting in certain time frames or circumstances, innovation management needs to strike the right balance of theories and practices; creativity and processes, knowledge and imagination.

Innovation & reference: Innovation is the process that can be managed. If we no longer reference the past, then we are likely to repeat the mistakes of the past. Theories and lessons learned are important to improve innovation effectiveness. The theory is designed in actual contexts; practice is governed by theory. All practice is rooted in the theory of some kind, continue to examine the lessons learned from innovation initiatives, and consider whether what we learned has been refined into contextual intelligence for leading innovation.

Innovation requires you to discover innate talent according to your specific gifts and passions, live an authentic life, inspire others and get inspired by bigger pictures to solve problems and achieve more. The best way to go on discovering what we are capable of doing is by following our insights, intuitions, and imagination while at the same time, keeping our feet firmly on the ground. It's critical to perceive invisible behind the scenes, alter or change the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions.

Innovation is about thinking differently, acting differently, delivering differently, or adding value differently. Innovations in the digital era are coming at a seemingly much faster pace, with changes and potential disruptions. There are many ways to innovate, the art of discovery is about rising above the status quo and taking on a new set of activities to create previously unconsidered solutions and unlocking collective potential.

Posted in: Innovation