Two Ways to Recognize Real Innovation

You can’t escape it. In every sector, in every business, seemingly in every meeting, someone uses the term innovation. Agency side, client side, education, even parenting is not immune from the call to innovate. Sometimes I wonder, are we all talking about the same thing? How do we know? I’m proposing a two-step process for identifying real innovation—the kind that gets celebrated in articles, resumés and boardrooms.

We seem to recognize when something is innovative. Self-driving vehicles just feel innovative. So do Airbnb and Lemonade (the insurance company, not the beverage). And, years after, we still seem to know that pretty much everything Steve Jobs said was innovative (and apparently, always worth putting on a poster). But how do we measure, say, the idea that we want to pitch in the next board meeting? How do we know if that’s innovative? I suggest, for starters, we use a quick two-step test to vet any idea we think may be innovative.

Years ago—as in, a few hundred of them—it could actually be dangerous to be innovative. Innovation was close to heresy during a time when deviations, either social, doctrinal or professional, were rather less than celebrated. As proof, consider that Henry Burton got his ears cut off in 1636 England (not exactly a hotbed of innovation) for advocating innovation in church hierarchy. Ouch.

Today, however, if you don’t list “innovation” at least once on your resumé I wonder if you’ll even get past an initial screening (I list it 3 times on page 1 just in case). We seem to want everyone, at all levels of the organization, to be innovators. But do we really agree on what we’re saying? And what, besides chaos, would actually result from everyone being an innovator? I suggest we rethink our definition of innovation.

Step One: Get out your dictionary and look up "innovation".

First step: does it pass a Webster's test? At its simplest, the term innovation essentially means “to do something differently.” If that’s true, all the idea has to be to pass the first test is new.  One of the best ways to spot “new” was proposed by design icon Marty Neumeier in his book “The Brand Gap” (which is still relevant even though old enough to reference “innovative” brands Netscape and Cingular—I’ll wait while you Google them). His theory: when an idea is innovative it will scare the hell out of everybody. I don’t know about “everybody”, but I do operate by the principle that if everyone’s comfortable with an idea, it’s probably been done before. Innovation should make people nervous because change feels risky.

This is where I’ve seen many organizations go wrong at a cultural level. When something is new enough to feel risky, it gets voted down immediately. In a risk-adverse organization where leadership looks for gains month over month—and at their most forgiving, every quarter—who has the stomach to propose something risky and unproven? The old adage still rings true: nobody gets fired for choosing IBM. If we want innovation, we have to develop a culture with the guts to explore something risky, even—gulp—though it may fail. Different is scary, but it is also the first proof that an idea is actually innovative.

But not all different is good different. A cereal brand could be innovative with their next redesign and make an entire package of corn flakes neon pink, right down to the flakes. It would certainly be disruptive on shelf (another buzzword we celebrate, at least in theory). Different, for sure. Innovative? Maybe in the Webster's Dictionary sense of the word. But if nobody puts it in their cart, is it any good? Shouldn’t innovation have to be actually work at some level in order to be celebrated?

Step Two: Ask, "Does my innovation create value?"

I think innovation needs to do something. Some organizations must agree, because a number of them have started shutting down their “innovation labs”, probably because after 3+ years many of them have failed to benefit the bottom line. So let’s introduce a second measurement into the definition: innovation, at least the kind we want to blog about, discuss in the boardroom and list on our CV, must be effective at achieving a goal. It must create value. In our example, the brand doesn’t only want the package to be noticed, they want it to be purchased. If it doesn’t achieve that, the newness didn’t create value. 

What qualifies as value may be different project to project. In a testing scenario, you may not mind a “failure” if as a result you gain data. In that case, data was the goal, and what looked like failure actually produced something of value. A goal can be as simple as brand recognition, an endorsement or even just a positive review by a key influencer, but if the innovation doesn’t achieve anything of value, it probably wasn’t any good.

So to be “innovation,” it must first actually be new, and it must create value. In most of our worlds, that means it has to move the needle, at least eventually, from the conceptual to the commercial. And that’s probably a definition that will gain at least some agreement from potential executive sponsors (if a culture exists with a willingness to grant enough runway for it to get off the ground before demanding that profit).

I think we all agree, innovation is necessary for our survival, whether we’re discussing a brand, a service offering or an organizational culture. And maybe we shouldn’t shut down our innovation labs, but rather reinvent how we approach them, define them, measure them, and support them. If innovation is the objective, it must first be in the culture, embraced long-term and given permission to fail on its way to success. The starting point may be as simple as ensuring when we use the term, we all understand it the same way. Perhaps that’s a good first step towards an innovation-supportive culture.

And then, hopefully nobody needs to get their ears cut off. Sorry Henry.