The Secret to Innovation

We all want to be “innovative.”

But if it were easy, everyone would do it, right?

A recent Guardian article,?The big idea: what’s the secret of innovation?, explained how, in a strange way, innovation can be predicted and framed.

The key, it would seem, is as my old boss used to say “Same, but different.”

The innovations that take off combine a lot of familiarity with a little bit of new.

They bring “together received wisdom with some fresh thinking.”

People need a baseline from which they can compare and orient themselves when processing new ideas. Things that are too “out there” are not consumable.

Things that don’t do anything differently or new are simply not innovative.

There’s a middle ground.

This is why analogies and metaphors can work so well, particularly if they are strong.

It’s why, in another great article,?“Building Your Startup’s Attention Flywheel,”?they talk about the “X for Y” analogy. In this case, they said “Airbnb for RVs.”

With that, you know exactly what they are selling and you understand the model. Plus, you’ve benefited from millions of dollars of Airbnb’s marketing spend.

We wall want to be “different” and we sometimes fall in love with just how innovative and cool our ideas and products are.

But that comes with a risk.

Not everyone will “get it” and not everyone will want to get it.

Better off to dial it back so that others do. Then, eventually, they’ll see how wonderful it all is.

Innovate at the pace of human change, not at the pace of technological change.