Innovate – verb – Make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.
Innovation is a word that is often unfortunately mired in hyperbole. The idea is a grand one, encompassing many truly positive actions such as change for the better, out with the old and in with the new as well as a general sense of pushing forward, whether that be in business, personal life or hobbies. We see innovation as the pinnacle of science, business and the arts, a lofty position from which only the mightiest paragons of their chosen field may see the route that took them there, almost as if the height of innovation is someplace we mere mortals can but aspire to reach and will always fall frustratingly short. Yet we also see the word applied to truly mundane items and processes, which on their own seem so simple that we are left with the thought ‘I could have done that.’
What is innovation, then? Or more to the point, how does one innovate? Is it a nigh unachievable goal, or is it something we stumble upon through sheer luck? Do the truly great innovators of the world have a process that is unfathomable to the masses, or are they as blind to brilliance as the rest of us?
When innovation is used to describe a method of working, especially in design, it is often mistaken to mean ‘new’ in the simplest possible form – something that has not existed before in any sense. But this is not strictly true of the word. We would all think of smartphones as ‘innovative’, a device that has now become so integral to our lives that the term ‘Nomophobia’ has been coined to describe a fear of losing ones phone. And yet we have had phones for nearly 150 years. They are by no means a new invention. Come back to me when we have holograms – now that would be an innovative technology.
But smartphones are innovative, and not because they are new – no matter how flashy your new iPhone is, it’s not that it is new that it is innovative. It is that it is different, or more specifically it uses a different set of tools to do a job. And herein lies the heart of innovation and how we can all be innovators.
Remember that phrase I used earlier ‘the height of innovation’. Well that was a lie. Innovation is not a height that one aspires to reach, it is the path, the journey. Innovation not only encompasses new ideas, but also old ideas used in a different manner, bringing in ideas that other people have used and applying them to your own problems and tasks. To innovate is to make mistakes, to apply old ideas in new ways and new ideas to old things. It is not plucking something, fully formed, from mid air – it is to try, to fail, to reassess and to try again.
Innovation is not just about making something new. It is about finding creative solutions and pushing ourselves to keep on that road, no matter the hurdles.
