With financial and political crisis affecting businesses and governments around the globe it’s no surprise that people yearn for solutions to their problems. I’ve noticed that innovation has popped up as one of them.
Unfortunately, while innovation is practical and useful it seems that in the blink of an eye it’s loosing it’s meaning. So to be clear, Innovation does not equal Solution. According to Webster online dictionary innovation =
: a new idea, device, or method
: the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices, or methods
See? No solution. Using innovation to act as your solution is like wanting to loose weight and calorie counting while subsisting on cakes, soft drinks and large amounts of fried chicken.
Let’s be honest though, we’ve never really risked not having enough solutions. It’s just that they don’t always work. Or sometimes we are just stuck.
If that’s the issue then let’s get unstuck. We could try new things, experiment with new ideas, devices or methods. We would probably develop processes to successful introduce these new ideas, devices or methods (innovation). Nevertheless, there remains no guarantee that these new ideas will work, we’ll just have to test them. Basically, I’m suggesting that innovation is one of those, ‘Tis the journey not just the destination’ scenarios.
So go ahead, make innovation a pillar of your business or theory or change, just don’t expect a pillar or theory change to solve your problems. As an athletic coach once said, (probably not in so many words) ‘you will just have to get used to the process of greatness’.
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