I’ve introduced my Daily Innovation Model, built to help companies see innovation as a daily function of their job. To start using it, you should first understand where you are exactly.
Incremental to Radical innovation
The first continuum, going vertically from bottom to top is concerned with the type of innovation.
Practically everything in the world builds upon something else and hence, is incremental. But relative to each other some are less so, i.e they are more radical. For example, the iPod as a whole was more incremental than radical. But iTunes was more radical than incremental. The original Wright brothers’ airplane was more radical. Subsequent aircraft were, to an extent, incremental.
Having said that, the iPod, the Boeing 747 and other products were also radical in the way that they contained cutting edge technologies. And hence, each of our perspectives might vary, resulting in the same product being placed at different points on the continuum. There is nothing wrong with that since there are no absolutes in this game.
Product and Process innovation
The second continuum, going horizontally from left to right, is concerned with the focus of the innovation.
When you try to answer the question, “Are Uber and Airbnb products or processes?”, you cannot be faulted for getting tied up in knots. You might say, they are both services. For our definition, the term Product implies services as well – anything that is delivered to the end user.
A pure process on the other hand is “a way of doing things,” i.e. how we create the actual product or service. So manufacturing is a process that creates, say, a car. Or analysis of financial transactions is the process that delivers the service of a company audit. In the app world, the code and technology behind the scenes is the process that creates the interface and delivers the service.
Context, however, is important. Manufacturing is a process for an auto maker. It consists of machines that combine together to produce a car. But the machine is a product for another manufacturer, whose end user is the auto maker. See, it can get complicated! Hence, the continuum.
READ MORE:
Putting the Daily Innovation Model together
FROM THE START:
“Innovation is not for us”, they say
By Rumman Ahmad. An MSc in Creativity and Change Leadership from Buffalo State University, Rumman trains, teaches and facilitates groups of people to learn and apply the creative process to solve problems, energizing and motivating them to do their best. He is also the organizer of an annual conference on innovation in Pakistan. An Exago partner since 2016 in this key geography, Rumman has developed a Model for Daily Innovation which can be complemented by Exago’s innovation management software.