INNOVATION - DO NOT USE THIS WORD BEFORE READING THIS ARTICLE

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??????????In recent years, at least in the last 4, I have paid more attention to the word innovation.

?????????????????Innovation according to the dictionary is...

??????????????But it must be understood that not everything that is new is innovation. People use the word Innovation with the same energy that they use the expression Entrepreneurship and other modern terms.

??????????????In a simple and shallow concept, we can say that “ innovation is something new and that changes the previous shape”.?????????????

??????????????According to the author Alf Rehn, Finnish writer and speaker, there are 2 types of innovations: superficial and deep. He also cites in his book Innovation for the Fatigued, examples of the types he elected, superficial innovation is the one that brings comfort or partially solves an issue. Deep innovation is the one that changes the world. He cites examples such as an app that determines best times to sunbathe on a beach as a superficial innovation, and deep innovation a device that autonomously cleans the oceans seas. I particularly believe that the ruler for measuring innovations should be greater than the two vectors cited by Alf. I would broaden the spectrum of this ruler by subdividing:

??????????????Surface innovation?????????Inevitable?????????????

??????? Light

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????Average

??????????????Deep Innovation?????????????Great?????????

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????Extraordinary

So the ruler starts with a type of innovation, the inevitable. The telephone is an inevitable invention, like the wheel, the knife and the pan. They were essential to human development and for a time they changed the world. With this concept, we begin to disappoint author Alf Rehn once again. Things change.

A log that turns into a canoe is an Inevitable Shallow Innovation, but a raft with logs tied together is a Light Shallow Innovation. When a wind propulsion system is adapted to this raft, we will have already raised the level to an Average Superficial Innovation. If we now think of a boat built by a 3D printer using recyclable materials, we will have a case of Large Deep Innovation, and if a solar-powered reactor and autonomous navigation system are coupled, the Innovation will be Extraordinary Deep.

Not all analogies are unanimous, but the fact that we stretch the ruler of this measurement already gives us indications of understanding the purposes of measuring things. Problem solving is directly related to the level of need. Startups nowadays are measured almost like that too, or rather, the product they develop. The PAIM MATRIX, or Matrix of Pain in a free translation (figure below), exemplifies exactly where the products can be allocated. The product that has high frequency and solves a high need can be disruptive and innovative at higher levels. Finding an equation for a startup, you also get an innovation.

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So were Netflix, Spotify, Uber, AirBNB, Whataapp, Amazon and others in the technology industry and that broke constant paradigms of a society and changed the form and behavior of this same society in a short time. These entrepreneurs in the services market have displaced other great entrepreneurs who have traditional businesses of consumer goods, in those silly lists of richer or more influential.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, this is the name of a classic film filmed for the first time in 1971 and which had its most popular remake by director Tim Burton with Johnny Depp playing Willy Wonka and released in 2005. Revisiting the film with an industrial look, different from the times I watched it with my daughters and saw only drama and chocolates everywhere, one can observe a very well written script. At a certain point in the movie Willy Wonka travels to distant Oonpaloompaland to research new flavors. Traveling is necessary, the poet would say. Inside the forest, Wonka is attacked by a giant flying animal, similar to a huge bee, and to protect himself he spreads his machete against the cat and divides it in half. At this time, he tastes the sap of the animal disposed in his weapon and enjoys the taste, as if he would adapt a recipe with such an ingredient. Moments later, still in the forest, Wonka meets the King of the Oompa Loompa people, who is a worshiper of Cocoa as if it were a divine entity, and Wonka convinces him to work together. Having colleagues passionate about the business is also a design for alleged success. Later in the film, inside the factory, Wonka is asked by the mother of a child about the meaning of a room full of different equipment. The factory owner then replies that this is an innovation laboratory. Please, give another Oscar to the writers of this movie.

Aquiles Priester is an extraordinary musician, born in Africa but his Brazilian parents brought him to Brazil as a child. He started his career as an artist pretending being a drummer, assembled his first drums with cans and buckets, and since he was so dedicated he was hired and made his first performances actually playing, but still without playing the bass drum because he didn't have the resources to buy a standard drum to learn or even have classes. Today Quiles is the synonym of double bass drums and his techniques are admired and replicated throughout the world through his methods available in video classes or workshops that he teaches in Brazil and abroad. He played and formed heavy metal bands touring throughout dozens of countries over the past few decades. Achilles and bands of his genre have higher recognition outside of Brazil as well. Achilles had many influences and many of them are explicit if you superficially observe him, but what Achilles showed me is that you have to desire and pursue voraciously your goals and in order to do that you need to think not as a drummer percussionist but as a drummer human being, which thinks and has feelings, putting in energy, as much energy as you can. The people most connected to the genre notice when there's a drum set and when there's a drummer. Aquiles did not invent emotion in front of an instrument, but made explicit the power of the drums, contrasting overdrive guitar riffs to the sound of voices echoing phrases from strong poems. You can innovate wherever you are. A phrase I use regularly to say that we should expand our multidisciplinary skills is Achilles’, as he once mentioned that it is very common for his students to appear with skills ready in just one of their arms, which is totally common to all right-handed or left-handed, but that for a high-performance musician can restrict professional success. Recognizing such limitations within oneself is the beginning of challenging oneself to settle such differences.

Porsche cars have a lot of technology. The more carbon fiber, the less weight in the vehicle and the more milliseconds are saved for the vehicles to reach the infamous speed of 100 kilometers per hour in less time. One of the things owners can choose from is the size or predominant colors of the analog clock that stamps the center of the bezel, and if the owner forgets to set it up, an engineer or fitter will do so. In newer versions it is highly expected that the time will appear on the TFT panel in the center next to the driver's field of vision or even that the time will be projected on the multimedia center along with other features, but once the availability of having the analog clock was an innovation and it has become a tradition. Sometimes that is what happens, something new in the past can be questionable today and that is justified because it was once innovative. This is an example that innovation may be temporary and preserving it turns it into a wide tradition.

??????????????The Innovation theme is related to an institution more than to an individual. But how do companies innovate? I dare say it's through people's encouragement, of course. And how do companies learn to innovate? With the movement of these same people, thinking outside the box, throwing the box away and wrapping the box in another box. Today, colleges have a social function, some even need to teach incoming students to read, unfortunately, graduation no longer graduates. Management guru Peter Druker once fired: "People are hired for their skills and fired for their attitudes." Other times, depending on the course, five years form a color prism where at the beginning of the course a scenario is offered that at the end of the last year is totally different. We need to learn more each day, especially teaching how to learn. To adapt to changes in the times require, a concept called "Lifelong Learning" came up. We must not confuse it with a portion of the generation that uses videos to learn how to make cheese, virtual diving course, putting a strap on a camera or playing four-minute songs in a three-minute video lesson. Learning throughout life is adapting to what is necessary, filling gaps, just like the innovation that solves the pain of a problem. Read books, the person who reads hundreds of books will have lived hundreds of lives. Seek knowledge, is the advice to humanity given by a supposed extraterrestrial in a video out there.

??????????????An expression used by economist and journalist Ricardo Amorim on his social network recently caught my attention, it said: “If you think the cost of innovating is high, wait until you discover the cost of becoming obsolete”. Ricardo refers to companies that remain on an altar spectrum, unattainable. The phrase is shallower than it sounds, it's not someone else's desire or osmotic twist, it's a mantra that luckily has reached an increasingly smaller number. After all, it seems that we are in the knowledge age, or we should be.

I've seen innovations that were released out of time, sometimes late, sometimes as an "early spark", as the slang says. For some situations, in fact many, observing the habit in other markets can generate a lot of learning. Being a good observer is increasingly important, some things are created and others adapt. For some types of market, it is still necessary for a large player to form the scope of use or consumption, as some situations are so unusual or unexpected that the base needs to be created in order to have traction for the willing innovation. Henry Ford said: “People can have a car any color they want, as long as it's black”, or Steve Jobs: “People don't know what they want until you show them” and that reminds me of another sentence even harsher from the same Ford: “If I had asked consumers what they wanted, they would have said: a faster horse”. Innovation requires solving a problem that you don't think you have, until you notice that you don't understand that you've been without it for so long.

??????????????I used a lot of introspective time that the partial seclusion the Pandemic held me in to learn other skills. Ana Terra Café's brewed coffee course, Castelli's bean to bar chocolates, the world of caramels with Renata Penido, master blender with Aline Bortoletto and, most unexpectedly, the craft brewing course by the Berlin VLB taught virtually and which ratified me as student to professor at the institution at the Academia da Cerveja/Ambev . All these skills to return knowledge to the products I help develop. All of this still and while we innovated in inputs, techniques, use of wood, spices and changed the behavior of the brand with consumers who changed their habits, in the face of a factory expansion, approval of new suppliers, registration of new distributors, changes in internal management and hundreds of other daily demands.

??????????????But here I also thank the trust of other managers in Lohn and my co-workers, without them it would not be possible for us to be a creative and innovative brewery. With the rebranding we did in 2019, our values became clear, including innovation and concern, made explicit on panels in different visible places in the factory. We belong to innovation. Our first beer menu has beers with fruits and spices such as butiá, two beers with sugar cane juice, goji berry and cumaru with funghi secchi and we never stop. We are quite responsible for the democratization of Catharina Sours, the first Brazilian style, including exporting them. Carvoeira itself was the most awarded in Brazil for consecutive years, being a Pastry Beer long before we understood the term, and indeed today it is perhaps the most cloned beer in Brazil. We developped recently Green Belly with the help of Fazenda Santa Catarina/Ambev, using processed hops turning it into a regular beer. We also have seasonal and limited beers among so many sour beers of mixed fermentation, in wood with cocoa and other spices, apple fermented, distillate aging in beer barrels, barley in the artisanal coffee where we are gypsies, bottles of beers with nitrogen, etc...

??????????????Innovation requires observation and movement, and learning needs to be compatible so that with assertiveness there is no margin for error and that it is not unmanageable.

Innovation is not just something new, but: INNOVATION GENERATES FAST OPPORTUNITIES.