It is surprising how innovation is impacting our lives every day, and the pace of innovation is increasing. Many of these innovations have the potential to truly change our lives. For instance, researchers are now working on developing materials that actually can mask themselves from light so that the objects become invisible. The fanciful “cloak of invisibility” may become a reality in the future!

But what is innovation and what are the differences between inventing and innovation?

Innovation Defined

In general, an invention is marked by the creation of or new existence of something. Most often this occurs in a lab or research facility. It can involve either a tangible or intangible item that has been newly created.

Whereas, an innovation is the use of a more effective device or process or a new idea. A key part of this definition is that an innovation involves the utilization of an invention or idea in either a business or marketplace—this is a critical distinction. There are thousands of inventions that never became an innovation because they were never used in the marketplace.

Included in this definition are both technical innovations (new products, technologies, and services) and administrative innovations (new procedures, policies, and organizational forms).

In essence, an innovation involves the conversion of an idea or invention into something that is useful to someone. This usefulness involves the exploitation of the invention. For instance, the invention of the TCP/IP communications protocol was exploited and utilized in the innovation we know as the Internet.

It is also important to note that an innovation may be a recombination of old ideas, methods or practices that challenges the status quo. This includes formulas, methods, and unique approaches that are perceived as new by the marketplace.

“Doing Something in a Better Way”

However, in working with our clients we use a broader and more encompassing definition of innovation that expands the concept of innovation, which is – “doing something in a better way”. This definition incorporates totally new things, but also older things that have either been forgotten or fallen into disuse.

Examples of innovations involving the rediscovery of something include:

1. Concierge doctors – which are basically reintroducing the tradition of the family doctor who would make house calls, knew you and your circumstances personally, and would provide you with individualized care.
2. Walkable cities and front porches – that are actually changes that take us back to how many people lived in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century where they were more connected to their community.
3. Bike paths and traveling by bike – which was a method commonly used in many countries before the explosion of the use of automobiles and now is a way people in various parts of the world still get around.

The 9 Different Types of Innovation

 The above definition of innovation serves us well because when many people think about innovation, the primary thing that comes to mind is the newest gadget or software app. However, our definition of innovation includes the fact there are nine different types of innovation:

1. New products and services—Using innovation to develop new products and services (e.g., a new cell phone or cloud-based service).
2. Cost reductions and productivity gains—Applying innovation to lower operating expenses or to become more efficient (e.g., a process to reduce wasted material in a manufacturing activity or using new software that enables field service personnel to be more productive).
3. Customer experience improvements—Separate from new products and services is coming up with ideas to improve your customers’ overall experience in dealing with you (e.g., giving customer support personnel greater latitude and power to solve customer problems during the first call).
4. Employee satisfaction and engagement increases—Using innovative thinking with regard to how personnel are treated that enables you and your personnel to work as partners (e.g., developing a true team environment or the implementation of an incentive compensation plan tied to customer satisfaction surveys).
5. Supply chain and vendor interaction enhancements—Working with suppliers and vendors to explore joint development of innovative initiatives so that you and they operate in concert (e.g., Wal-Mart’s joint development of RFID [Radio Frequency ID] inventory tracking with its supply chain).
6. Market reorientations—Applying an existing product or service to new markets (e.g., Arm & Hammer utilizing their baking soda in laundry detergent, toothpaste, pet care, etc.).
7. Business organization restructurings—Using innovative thinking to establish new ways to organize and operate your company to provide competitive advantages (e.g., Hewlett Packard’s reorganization into Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Hewlett Packard, Inc.).
8. Environmental impact advances—Applying innovation to environmental issues (e.g., development of a system that provides real-time monitoring of specific smoke-stack pollutants that enables immediate adjustment of the equipment generating the pollutants).
9. Societal enrichments—Using innovation to improve a society (e.g., having prison inmates train service dogs who are provided to returning soldiers to help with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This multi-faceted understanding of innovation is critical because if an organization wishes to beat their competition and differentiate itself in the marketplace, it needs to embrace the full spectrum of innovations it can develop to achieve its goals. To accomplish this a company needs to train their personnel to look for potential innovations throughout their daily activities.

This training is critical because people just don’t normally think of innovations in their daily work routine. Therefore, they need to be educated how to look at all they do with an eye of “doing something in a better way”.

If you would like to explore how get your company and employees thinking about innovations from a much more comprehensive viewpoint, please contact us using the below information so we can show you how to identify and implement all nine types of innovation within your company.

Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 17 years, we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve their goals by using our unique, comprehensive, and systematic FastTrak Innovation Program™, Innovation Academy™, and  Structure of Success™ methodologies. Using the components in these methodologies, each month we examine an aspect of how to transform your business or organization into a true 21^st Century enterprise.

Office phone: (770) 642-4220

www.FountainheadConsultingGroup.com

George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com

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