Innovation and Transformation

Innovation

If you have a job where you are expected to be innovative and produce new ideas, fresh approaches and original concepts much of the time, there is no doubt you will be under extra pressure.

Maintaining an edge of innovation sometimes means you can never rest on your laurels but have to produce new laurels on a regular basis.

Something New

Innovation can be inventiveness creating something new that wasn't there before.

On the other hand, innovation can be changing or transforming something that already exists into something else.

Innovation can be shaking the dust off old ideas, polishing them up and using them again.

Stretch Your Imagination

Whatever form it takes, innovation means using and stretching your imagination to meet the current demands of your job. So this is where the pressure comes in.

If you work in an environment where you must come up with good ideas and poor ones are not tolerated, you will undoubtedly come up with 'safe' ideas rather than innovative ones.

If you create a climate where ideas in any form are encouraged and considered, there is a far greater chance of netting something exciting and innovative.

Many Ideas Needed

Innovation is encouraged in a place where silly ideas as well as serious ones get aired, discussed and even experimented with, just for the hell of it.

If fifteen ideas are floated and fourteen of them stink, you at least have one good one left. Whereas, if you think you have to come up with one perfect innovation, it's far less likely you will.

In other words, 100% of a fair idea is far better than 15% of a brilliant one!

Innovation doesn't have to mean chucking out the old to make way for the new. Innovation can simply mean rearranging what you've already got in a new way which will shift the way everyone else sees it.

'There's no such thing as Creativity; you just assemble what's already there.' George Balanchine