Vidhya Srinivasan

What does the term Innovation mean to you?

I was reading some articles on the web and became really curious to find out what the term "Innovation" meant to everybody.

Innovation, according to the thesaurus means "something new or different introduced ". Let me state my perspective of what it is not - It is NOT invention. Innovation could be a new process, service, product, culture shift and on and on..I think of innovation as a way that influences the community in a positive and exciting way. Lets take Apple products as an example. Apple just introduced the Macbook Air. Now thats innovation..just when you think Apple is done with improvements on the laptops, they wow us again. In this case, innovation was taking an existing product and improving it, in ways that nobody would have expected.

I call something an innovation when you can take an idea from concept to launch and it becomes ubiquitous. Thats when you know you have been successful. Innovation creates new trends, expectations and standards. Apple products are a testament to that. This raises another question - is innovation an organic process? Every company or person wants to innovate. Innovation will definitely disrupt the existing organization's culture - big or small. Change is the most important and supporting attribute for innovation.

My team asks me if we are really an Innovation Engineering team and my answer is "YES" and my reasons are stated above. How does innovation start?

1. Start with an idea - (could be new or an existing one),
2. Create POC
3. Presentation with the pitch to the decision maker
4. Implement and Launch

It is not innovation until the end result is wide practice of a process, product, service or a phenomenon. What do you guys think?

Posted at 09:51AM Jan 16, 2008 by Vidhya Srinivasan in Sun  |  Comments[2]