Is Innovation a Process or an Outcome?
You believe that everything we know and desire is the outcome of a single discovery that was made 1.9 million years ago. Please explain.
The discovery you speak of is fire, and it represents the first moment in history when civilization transformed itself. The transformational part came when humans discovered that fire could be put to beneficial uses, which vastly changed their behaviour and expectations. What is interesting to note is that fire already existed in the environment, it just wasn’t being put to a beneficial use. People came across it and observed it, but it had no ‘media’ for humanity, because we didn’t use it to accomplish anything.
It only became a ‘disruptive innovation’ when one day, somebody figured out how to preserve it and then someone else -- probably thousands of years later -- figured out how to start a fire. At first we used it for obvious things like light and heat, but before long we used it for another major transformation: energy. Disruptive innovations such as fire and electricity are not manifest in the moment the new technology is introduced; the disruption occurs only when human motivation embraces the technology and allows it to enhance everyday life.
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You believe innovation is not a process, but an outcome. How so?
Innovation is that moment in which behaviour is changed by an invention, and thus it is a human activity. As we use an invention, our goals change and our motivation changes, making further innovations necessary. In today’s business world, innovation is tricky. I’ve worked with lots of large corporations, and after a few such experiences I realized that great ideas tend to get disregarded and are not implemented. For example, I did some work for a global telecom company, the outcome of which was a device quite similar to the iPhone, but with even more capabilities. This company was ideally suited, in my view, to create a new market space with this device. The presentation went very well, and then the leaders said, ‘Fabulous work, great job; but this is not our business’. That line really stuck with me and has become a dominant aspect of my search to try and understand where innovation fits within organizations, and why some people still believe that it is ‘not their business’.
I have come to realize that many organizations treat innovation as a process to be managed, rather than as an outcome that changes people’s lives. If we return to fire for a moment, fire is not innovation, it is an invention. The innovation part entails using it in multiple ways to innovate new ways of life. The same can be said about YouTube. Our behaviour when we are on YouTube is the innovation, because it is a piece of technology that existed before it was called YouTube. Our ability to upload, download and observe – that is the innovation.
You have said that the role of business is “to create the tools, objects and services through which people can manifest what they want and who they are.” Is all innovation aspirational?
Innovation is rooted in desire, not need. We all feel the desire to become better through experiences, education, tools, systems and services, which help us achieve our higher goals. If you think about it, civilization is really a journey towards creating the conditions we want. It is our shared history as humans that we desire to be more than we are, and the role of business is to create the media for you to become something else.
If transformation is the key to growth, then the tools of transformation or the media for transformation is what a company creates. This applies to everything from soap to computers and iPhones. Apple is a great example. I don’t see Apple as a computer company or an IT company, but as a culture-creating company. Apple doesn’t create products, it creates a way of life, a way of engaging with the technology that is different than just using the product. Frankly, I don’t really care much about how nice the product looks, because I’m lost in it; I’m much more interested in what I feel about it and how I’m different with it, and this is the key to understanding the role that business plays today. Apple creates moments for happiness. In other words, ways to make me happy. Proctor & Gamble does this with certain products, as does Unilever; and caloric nourishment is not the only reason we eat -- any food company that knows what its true job is essentially creates products for transformation.
In your innovation paradigm, what is the role of design?
This takes us back to the debate about whether innovation is a process or an outcome. As I’ve said, I believe innovation is an outcome, but it needs a process to achieve that outcome, and that process is design. The process that best describes the capabilities needed to arrive at innovation outcomes -- which include attention to motivation, goals and desires resulting in a new behaviour -- is the design process, because it is so closely connected to both technology and user preferences, user needs, psychology, ergonomics and so on.
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