“A breath of fresh air” was what I experienced as I spoke to the CEO of a new, young, innovative emerging company in the IT sector recently. It seemed like the innovation, the new idea and the feeling of being the firsts in any segment can keep energies at a high for a long time to come. Is innovation an ability to see change as an opportunity or is it the ability to seize the opportunity to change? My opinion is that it depends on whether the innovative idea is driven by the availability of unused technology untouched by others or whether the idea has stemmed from the need of the hour in the market. An idea needs to be nurtured, brainstormed and created but then the story just about begins there. Thomas Edison once said “genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration”. When the perspiration begins, one sees the idea all around; it becomes top of the mind stuff. The observing, learning about the market, zooming in on the gaping gaps becomes one’s daily activity, all in good time. Yes, TIME is important, time and freedom to think and explore, for the idea to turn to reality, for the idea to turn into innovation. I guess there is innovation when one sees the change as an opportunity to a “new change” and tirelessly works towards it. No wonder the CEO had only one thing to say to me “Innovate Innovate Innovate”!!
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Innovation does not have to be new ideas all the time as most assume. Even taking an idea and adapting it to a particular situation’s context is innovation – take the example of shaadi.com. This is a classic example of taking an already existing model of online portals and adapting it to an Indian context. Now, brokering marriages is not a new concept in India and the same for online portals all over – however, marrying the two ideas is innovation and we all know how successful shaadi.com is.
Yes. The example shows how they have identified a gap and used the opportunity in the need of the hour. There could be examples of how even work processes that have been followed in a specific industry have proved to be the solution to an issue in a totally different sector. They are all examples of innovation. Thanks.
Another driver for innovation is the need to make do with scarce resources, and therefore reposition the product for non-conventional use. There was a good article on the Indian ability to improvise – jugaad in Hindi from those pieced-together vehicles you see on rural roads. BW had an interesting article on this recently: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2009/id2009121_864965.htm