Innovators VS. Operators - Which one are you?

Innovation has over 60 definitions in various scientific papers. Broadly, it is recognised as the creation and implementation of products or services that are both novel and valuable. Growth stemming from innovation should ideally be sustainable, repeatable, and significant, enhancing existing products and processes to deliver improvements for users.

While we could continue expanding this definition endlessly, agreeing on a universal interpretation is challenging. Ultimately, each person understands innovation in their own way. But doesn’t this subjectivity make it harder for people to innovate, knowing their work might be perceived as non-innovative by others?

Companies that effectively harness the power of innovation often outshine their competitors, achieving economic profits up to 2.4 times higher than those that do not. Historically, successful innovations share common traits: they address unmet customer needs, offer a well-conceived solution, and include a business model that supports monetisation.

It’s not just about inventing the “what” but also the “how”—how it will be produced, marketed, deployed, and maintained.

Measuring innovation's success isn’t always a matter of financial metrics alone; focusing solely on profit can blind a company to valuable opportunities. Metrics such as customer growth, user satisfaction, and product quality can be just as significant, depending on the type of value your company aims to prioritise.

Innovation can also focus on new markets, customers, products, or business models, but ultimately, it drives value and growth. Evidence suggests that companies investing in innovation during crises tend to outperform their competitors during recovery periods.

If your company aims to innovate, disruptive innovation should be your focus. This is where smaller companies seek to challenge established players in existing or emerging markets. You could enter and claim a niche at the lower end of an existing market or create an entirely new market segment to serve a customer base overlooked or unreachable by current offerings.

On the other hand, some companies produce few novel or disruptive products and instead focus on operational excellence and efficiency. These companies prioritise optimising current business practices to achieve maximum economic benefit with minimal resources. In such environments, routines, metrics, and results are prioritised, while creativity isn’t encouraged to the extent needed for disruptive innovation.

These companies often allocate minimal resources to high-risk ventures like developing new products or processes. Nonetheless, operator companies can still benefit from the innovation process, as many of their goals can be enhanced through design methodologies.

For an operator-focused company, innovation is still feasible as a strategy for boosting business performance. Sustaining innovation, which involves enhancing existing processes and technologies to improve products for current customers, is ideal for businesses wanting to maintain their market position.

The operator perspective is essential for creatives to remain grounded while maintaining enough room for out-of-the-box thinking. Both the innovator and operator mindsets are crucial to fostering innovation, a balance that the design process inherently considers—striking an equilibrium between the concrete and the abstract.

Innovation requires a thorough understanding of user needs, which can be achieved through Design Thinking. This methodology promotes empathy and centres on human-focused design to reveal hidden needs and address explicit pain points identified through market and user research. Developing products with the design process has consistently resulted in some of the most innovative products and practices across a wide range of industries, remaining integral to the innovation process.

Innovation isn’t just about finding a creative solution; it’s also about effective resource allocation. Organisations often struggle to reallocate resources to seize the best opportunities. Some challenges can only be addressed through strategic, innovative thinking, making it vital for companies to assess whether innovation aligns with their goals—and, if so, to determine which type of innovation is most appropriate for their situation.