There are many definitions of innovation. A simple one is this: innovation is thinking of, and then implementing, a better way of doing things. An innovation doesn't have to be something completely new and different. It can be any sort of incremental improvement. It doesn't have to be a new product, or even a new feature of a product. It can be any small advance made to any part of an organisation that makes it better. If you work out a way to make a process or system more efficient, that's innovation. For example, if a process takes a person five minutes to complete, and you work out a way for them to do the same task in four minutes, that's an innovation.
Some people intimidate themselves by thinking that an innovation has to be something amazing, like the next smartphone. It doesn't. You are being innovative any time you improve, in some small way, any aspect of the way you do things. A tiny incremental improvement to one part of your business can, over time, create substantial benefits. You don't have to re-invent everything. You just need to look out for opportunities to make things a little better. If you keep making small incremental improvements, benefits will follow.
An innovator is someone who introduces a new idea, method or product. You might be thinking, ‘Well, that's not me'. Yes, it is. If you ever thought up a game to play when you were a kid, if you have made up a story for your kids, or have written a story (or even part of a story), or improvised an original way to fix something in your home, or come up with a way to improve something you do at work, then you have been an innovator.
Here's a (not very impressive) example of me being innovative. My wife and I used to have a cat who loved sleeping in our bed. I didn't like it much because she snored. The cat, I mean. So I started shutting our bedroom door at night. In response, the cat would jump out the window, run around the outside of the house and then climb in our window. So I decided to shut her in the kitchen/eating area at the back of the house with a cushion to sleep on and no windows open wide enough for her to get out. The entrance to the kitchen was a sliding door. The cat was so keen to get to our bed that she would press her body against the door and slowly slide it open. Tracey was an innovative and determined cat. In response, my innovation, thought up at two o'clock one morning after she had woken me for the third time, was to shove a chopstick between the sliding door and the wall, thus jamming it shut. It wasn't brilliant, but it was an original idea, and it worked.
Innovation has been enormously important in human history. Look around you. Everything you can see that is human-made is a product of human innovation: the chair you are sitting on, your coffee mug, the electric light, your phone, your clothes, this book — they all exist as a result of human innovation.
Innovation is the force that has driven human progress. It is our point of difference as a species. Penguins are doing pretty much what they did a million years ago. They may have evolved a bit, but they haven't innovated much. They still catch fish, raise their kids and try to keep warm the way their ancestors did. Humans, on the other hand, keep warm in very different ways. First we shivered, then we discovered fire and clothes, then we invented houses and fireplaces and insulation and gas and electrical heating.
A word about the difference between innovation and invention. An invention is the creation of a product or the introduction of a process for the first time, whereas innovation can be any sort of incremental improvement to a product or process. For example, the wheel is an invention. If, shortly after its invention, someone noticed that people were getting bored with plain grey wheels and started painting them with red and yellow stripes, that would be an innovation.
Almost every invention has been followed by innovations that improve it. For example, cars today are a lot better than they were fifty years ago. So are sound systems, running shoes and toasters. None of them changed dramatically in a year or two. Rather, a series of incremental innovations have meant that today's versions perform substantially better than their predecessors. Every time I buy a computer it is a bit thinner and lighter than my previous one. Each laptop is only a marginal improvement on the last one, but when I compare the one I have now with the one I had twelve years ago, there is a huge difference.
Humans have gone from using rudimentary stone tools to relying on smartphones, home delivery pizza and coffee machines in only a few thousand years. Whereas our ancestors worried about getting eaten by tigers, we worry about traffic jams, poor mobile coverage and paying electricity bills. Life isn't perfect these days but, thanks to countless inventions and innovations, for most of us it is a lot safer and more comfortable than it has ever been before.
Enough history. What does innovation mean for you and your business?
In the old days you could survive for quite some time without being at all innovative. If you made horseshoes exactly the same way that your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents made them, you would probably get on quite well.
Today, the pace of change is faster than it has ever been before. Many industries that have done things pretty much the same way for decades, even centuries, have had to reinvent themselves as a result of the digital revolution.
For example, for the past couple of thousand years if you wanted to buy something you went to the shop or the market. Now, suddenly, you don't have to. You can browse and purchase on your phone, and a few days later the thing you bought will arrive on your doorstep. Online retail is a fantastic innovation for the consumer, but is totally disruptive for the retail industry. Retailers must adapt or be left behind.
Nowadays there are very few industries in which you can be confident that things will still be done the same way in ten years' time. Even traditional industries like agriculture are changing.
Being a custodian of knowledge used to be enough. A couple of hundred years ago, if you were the person in your community who knew how to make candles, that would pretty much guarantee you a career. However, now that the internet has democratised knowledge and everyone can find out almost anything they want by googling it, simply possessing knowledge is less valuable. What is more important is how we apply that knowledge in a creative and innovative way.
The problem is that no matter how well you do things now, if you keep doing them the same way, then sooner or later you will be left behind. Someone will think up a better way of doing what you are doing, and then your business will be vulnerable.
To put it another way, today's cutting-edge best practice very quickly becomes tomorrow's fax machine.
When the fax machine came onto the market in the 1980s, it was like magic. Suddenly, everything that was on a piece of paper here could instantly be transferred to a piece of paper all the way over there! It blew my mind! Now, just 35 years later, fax machines are virtually obsolete. That's a pretty quick turnaround.
How many of the things you do today in your business, or in your job, will be done the same way in twenty years' time? In ten years? In five? Whatever job you have, whatever industry you are in, whatever business you are a part of, it is almost certain that much of it will be done differently ten years from now.
We don't know how things will change, but we can safely predict that they will, because that is what has always happened in human history. We know that change is coming, and yet most of the time we act as if it is not. Most of us spend lots of time doing our job, but very little time thinking of, and developing, innovative ways to do it better.
Many people have inboxes, diaries and to-do lists that are so full that they often feel they don't have a spare minute to think. They work hard doing everything that needs to be done to keep their business going today, but ignore the need to innovate to ensure they are ready for tomorrow.
Innovators don't do that.
Innovation is how we get to the future. It's how we make it. And if you don't do it, someone else will. Of course change can be uncomfortable, but the alternative is worse. If we duck the challenge of change, then opportunity passes us by.
It's not that hard to make the case that innovation is important. If you agree that it is, then you have the motivation to try to find better ways of doing things. But what you really need is a method.
The why is easy. It's the how that's tricky.