Before You Innovate, Ask the Right Questions

Each one of us face various problems in our day to day life and smartly with aide of our intellect and knowledge we overcome those in best possible way we can. Where there is a problem there can be an innovative way to address it. No one can be labeled as innovator and no one can be denied of being that, it’s just a matter of being at right-place, at right-time with right-tools sprinkled with little bit of creativity and out-of box thinking.

I just summarize my assimilation and sharing a snippet with viewers of my blog what author Greg Satell had explained about innovation, various methods of innovation and how companies are dwelling to build a balanced portfolio of innovation in very interesting articles “Before you Innovate, Ask the right Question”.  Synopsis of Greg detail article can be found below.

Two Questions each Innovator/Organization should ask to themselves:

1: How well is the problem defined?

             Problem definition should not be mundane following the traditional problem collecting templates it  can be as creative and as small as possible revitalizing all divisions and people to contribute.

For example: Steve jobs define problem about I-Pod like "I need 1000 songs in my pocket?"

2: Who is best-placed to solve it?

                    Once the problem is well defined, this is the next step where we should evaluate and identify people/organization those are best placed to address solution to underlying problem. A point of notion is that a person/ organization which identified or created problem may or may not be capable of proposing solution to it solely at this time we see various options of collaboration, cooperation and alignment.

     Various methods of innovation:

       1: Basic Research:

       Research activities focusing on some future technologies, with long time horizon, huge capital  investment and can be collaborative activity.

       2: Breakthrough Innovation:

       Where problem is well defined but organization lack capability to crack it either due to lack of expertise, or it requires insight and collaboration from external world.

                                        

3: Sustaining Innovation:

       Everything exist in world possess characteristics being improvised; such an improvisation is categorized under category of sustaining innovation

      4: Disruptive Innovation:

       These innovations are much complex as these innovations have potential to change the existing process, business models, theories etc.

As suggested by Greg, I do also believe that companies should starve to maintain a balance across entire quadrants instead of just running across a single vertical.

Reference

Blog source: Before you Innovate, Ask the right Question

Author:  Greg Satell 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: The above content is just a summary of author understanding of original article. All rights of original content belongs to Author  mentioned in summary.

------------------------------------------------------------------------