Francisco González Bree, Academic Director for the Master of Business Innovation (MBI) course at the University of Deusto in Spain says, ‘ The term “innovation” is losing its genuine meaning because many companies are using it to convey change when the progress they are describing is no more than ordinary.’ He is right. Just as the government describes every piece of spending as an ‘investment’ so bosses talk about every change as an ‘innovation.’ We need new words to differentiate radical innovation, finding an entirely new way to do things, from incremental innovation, which is really just improvement. How about ‘radovation’ and ‘incrovation’? Most managers and most business are good at incrovation – making improvements in current products, services, processes and methods. Most managers and most businesses are poor at radovation – implementing a completely fresh and challenging idea. Radical innovation is risky and can often threaten existing products and vested interests. It often fails leading to blame and recriminations. Yet the successful radovations are the real game changers.
How can you get incrovations? Start by asking customers, suppliers and staff how you can make things better. People close to the action often have good ideas for ways to improve the product or process. They can see the pain points and offer suggestions. It is a question of making what you have better. But the same process does not work for radovations. You can not make incremental changes to an airplane and end up with a helicopter. You could not have improved Encyclopaedia Britannica and evolved it into Wikipedia. It takes much more fundamental and radical thinking to find an entirely new way to meet a customer need. Now you need some lateral thinking techniques such as ‘What if? or ‘Random Word.’ These are described in ‘How to Generate Ideas’.
