Innovation is Not the Same as Change
Following up on the Question, "When Should We Innovate?", we get some great reader responses. Key to the response for today is the difference between change and innovation. The timing of innovation is crucial as well.
Jim writes:
Innovation for innovation’s sake, is rarely a good decision, but no always obviously so.
Resisting innovation, generally obvious, is likewise a bad idea.
If you are resisting change, where is the pressure coming from? If you are making change, what drives it?
If it’s from your markets’ needs and desires, current or potential, “resistance is futile”. Late to market is usually too late: Blackberry ??.
If it’s to solve problems that people cope with, perhaps unhappily, perhaps not even realizing that they have a problem, effectively, efficiently, elegantly: Bravo.
“I need to stay in touch, take care of business communication, keep up with my schedule and if I ever find a free moment (or just can’t take it any more), maybe play or listen to a bit of music. But, I hate …” led to the iPhone/smart-phone (end of the line for a host of single/narrow use devices).
Similarly: the laptop unchained us from our desks; ubiquitous Wi-Fi from network jacks and defined work spaces. Apple realized that with the data portal they tap into, the phone was too small, the laptop too large, but the long unaccepted tablet (with a dollop of sex appeal) was just right.
If it’s from the boys who just want to play with the latest toys or to give a little changed product the cachet of novelty, it can be a disaster. Windows Millennium and Vista delivered, as “innovations”, half-baked, what-for, and nice-but-not-enough features. These were wrapped around necessary fixes that many thought should have been applied to the products they replaced. Time will tell whether Win-8, with late to the game strategic changes of undetermined long and short term benefit, will suffer the same fate.
I did a gig developing a software based control system for a network switch maker that had resisted changing a well-engineered product until some of its folks jumped ship and developed an “inferior” PC controlled product. The (shrinking) installed base loved it, but they couldn’t sell into the changed market; the jumper bought them.
I contracted to help upgrade and re-brand an aging/stagnant data extraction and reporting product. It was mired in a flat file, batch world; we moved it into the online, database, real-time universe. Too late. After a brief resurgence, it faded into obscurity.
I hired on to help re-engineer a non-profit’s user facing, web-based, fundraising systems. Fundraisers solicited their friends and associates support in marathon, biking, etc. events, for which the non-profit trained them. We built a unifying platform; gave the users control of the look and feel of their fund raising pages, gave them a toolset to track their training and fundraising progress, and provided options that lowered barriers, adapted to lifestyles and provided multiple means and points of entry. In spite of (more than)a few R 1.0 and transitioning issues, has been instrumental in the non-profit’s weathering the economic downturn of the last 5 years (see, not every flower I touch dies).
A few bullet observations:
- Change, in and of itself, is not innovation.
- Innovation is not catching up or keeping up (with technology, with competitors); it is forging ahead.
- Innovation always involves risk of failure, but also, and overall much greater, opportunity for success.
- While you always dance with the one you came with (take care of your base), innovators know that the party will end, you may not want to be either first in or last out, and that you may have a different date (fickle us) at the next party (new markets).
- Innovation is discovery or creation of value, not management of cost and revenue. Value (what you give) is very different from price (what you get); I assert that it only exists from a customer perspective and that its measure is how much the former exceeds the latter, real and perceived. Innovation taps into and cultivates this reality.
- Stability and strength, while not innovation, are closely allied. Ongoing, creative change is needed to remain the favored solution to a problem, the preferred tool for a task. Is it not often true that this is what we are or should be seeking anyway?
Thanks, Jim, for the detailed response. You make your case well. We have a lot of other responses to follow up with later. If you would like to also get into the conversation, please send your thoughts in an Email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben
$$SWYNK$$
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