‘Innovation’ — A successful marriage
Innovation.
In the business and educational community, the word ‘innovation’ has become a buzz word. It’s little misleading and confusing sometimes though when people start using the word ‘Innovation’ interchangeably for ‘new’ or ‘something different’.
This article is my attempt to define ‘innovation’ in a way we could remember easily. I have tried to define it through metaphors and analogies. There is nothing inventing here
but hopefully, innovative! To understand why keep reading.
Merriam Webster dictionary defines innovation as ‘a new idea, device, or method. : the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices, or methods’. Well, I would like to argue that this definition is a little misleading. I will explain why shortly.
Before that one of my favourite definitions of innovation which I agree is this: Innovation is a recombination of old parts in new ways to create new value.
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For a lot of good reasons, I feel that Innovation is a successful marriage.
Beyond procreation, all successful marriages do a few other things. To keep things simple, let’s all agree that all newly married couples attempt to bring value in their own lives, value to each other and to their families.
The word value is the key here and is very subjective. Because, what every person values differ. Again, to keep things simple, lets once again agree that all successful couples value education. Every couple would want the best education for their children(s). What happens when your children are well educated?
Hold on with me, we are getting there. Keep reading!
I was arguing prior that Innovation is not just creating new ideas, methods, process, & products. Yes, innovation is something more than that. You would have known that by now. It’s ‘creating a new product that customers(to who you are creating) value’.
Creating something is inventing. Creating something that anyone else apart from you, value is ‘Innovation’. (How about innovating for yourself? Yes, you could do that. Truce!)
Think of this analogy: Inventing is giving birth to a child, Innovation is raising that child to be a good member of society who has ‘something of value’ to offer to society. That ‘something of value’ could be your skill to do a stand-up comedy(yes, you are conveying your idea in a comical and satirical way), that value we offer to the society
could be artistic, technical, etc.. (Thank goodness, there is this etcetera).
In the first place, why should we care about ‘Innovation’?
We don’t have to! But, we have good reasons to care about ‘successful marriages’. With successful marriages, innovation takes care of itself. Innovation is an outcome, it is a by-product.
Like all superhero movies, there is no fun without friction. There is no fun without hurdles. Successful marriages face few hurdles too. After all, men are from mars, women are from venus(Wink!!!)
Let’s talk about ‘successful marriages’.
~Rahul vignesh Sekar
P.S.: The second part of this 3 part series on innovation could be found here.
