The majority of people believe that innovation is tough and only exceptionally “creative” individuals are innovative. It can generally be seen as “not everyone's cup of tea”. However, there are two fundamental errors associated with these statements...
1. You don’t need creative genes to be innovative.
2.Creativity might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but innovation is.
This article will attempt to demystify the concept of innovation, so that each one of us is able to identify with our strengths and put them to better use in the organization. The aim is to help the company to be as innovative as each individual in it chooses to be.
What is innovation?
Innovation is much more than products and research and development. It extends to introducing a new channel partner, introducing a new market, introducing a new pricing model, introducing a new store keeping unit (SKU), or even introducing a new business model.
How can you be innovative?
Personal innovation is a process. It is about identifying what works for you and building on it to come up with a personal brand that is unique and helps anyone identify with you. The same applies with an organization. The necessary implication of being called innovative, is that its hard to replicate. Any change that withstands this test is a sure shot success. The success enjoyed by the half bitten silver apple is not because it came up with a phone that shows a video, plays music, shows you maps, tells you the temperature and where to go for your next holiday, but instead because it created a business model which extends beyond the phone sales.
Innovations need not necessarily be a Nobel prize winning, ground breaking discovery. However, it needs to be something new that captures value for your organization and is hard to replicate. Sound difficult? Actually it is not difficult at all. You only need to identify the channel that helps you reach the maximum number of people and identify the motivation that enables your customer to make the choice between you and your competitor. If you come up with ideas to make a change in a combination of these areas, you will have found yourself a winning idea to make a positive impact to your organization’s growth.
How to get started...
As soon as you sit with a piece of paper and a pen, you are ready to start being innovative!
Written by Aarati Ajay.
Aarati is an Associate Director of IXL Center and specializes in trainings for innovation, excellence and leadership. Email: