In the Netherlands innovation certainly has been a buzz word in the past year. A buzz word that has been met with a lot of ridicule, especially when the government level Innovation Platform is involved. Even though a couple of angles of the Innovation Platform are very worthwile, such as removing administrative barriers and paying attention to our educational system, to me it seems the Innovation Platform has been rightly ridiculed on other issues.
Innovation in the Netherlands is generally discussed as if it is a product. The discussion focusses on individual inventions (contests in tv shows e.g.), getting more people into exact sciences, and generally treating innovation and bleeding edge high-tech as synonyms. Creativity is acknowledged as being important in a very creativity stifling way, by designating a ‘creative sector’ and creating funds for groups and companies that fit that profile. This is of course not a bad thing for those involved, but it also sends an important negative message: if you’re not in the ‘creative sector’ you are not creative. Too bad for all those people with bright ideas and useful thoughts of how to bring those ideas to fruition that happen to work in the back-office of Grey and Dull Inc: sorry you don’t fit our creative category so you can’t be creative, now get back to the job you’re supposed to do. Anyway I’m ranting, and lest you might think I am envying those that do get money, I’m not. It is the wrong kind of money. It is the wrong kind of money because it seeks to stimulate the wrong image of innovation.
- Innovation to me is not a product, it’s an attitude to create growth both in a human/social and in a financial sense, empowering more people more.
- Innovation to me is not about one-off inventions, let’s kill the stroke of genius mythology right here shall we, it’s about collaboration around getting things done better, faster, easier, smoother, more sustainable effectively or reliable than before.
- Innovation to me is not a synonym of high-tech, it can be about structures, organizations and routines and social conventions.
- Innovation to me is not about only getting more science students (and yes we need them too), but about teaching all people to think for themselves as well as collaborate effectively.
- Innovation to me is not about collecting more ideas, but about learning how to turn those ideas into action with a reasonable chance at success.
That’s what innovation is to me. What is it to you?
Clients and clients of others I talk to and hear from in the Netherlands feel stuck because they think they need to adhere to the product centered high-tech invented by geniuses view of innovation, when all they want to do is do their work better in a changing world.
I have started to read up on innovation, and have been entering into conversations with a number of people that want to escape and change that view of innovation too.
In the coming months I intend to write more about themes I connect to innovation:
Focussing creative energy, personal information and knowledge management, knowledge nomads, complexity, turning ideas into action, networked organisation, collaboration, finding the questions of tomorrow, and a range of other stuff.
Making actionable sense in another guise as it were.
Think that sounds like nothing new? Exactly.
That’s what innovation is to me. What is it to you?
Hi Ton,
Nice thoughts about innovation. I’d like to share mine, and hope to add something new.
Innovation for me is more-or-less a new way of looking at problems. Problems we find are mostly (in our work) being able to bring quality to our customers. The better we fit their needs, the greater the quality of our work. But, as time changes, our customers and their wishes tend to change.
We must adapt, and when we need a silver bullet or a cunning plan, innovation is the holy grail we seek for.
Innovation isn’t always big, nor expensive, nor high-tech. You hit the problem on the spot in your blog. In my view, innovation is the result of a creative, consumer-driven, analytical mindset.
By stating problems bluntly, by daring to experiment, by looking at problems from a different view-point we are able to come up with innovative solutions. They’re called innovative because others didn’t come up with them – mostly because of the price, thechnology, or something else.
Innovation is hard to manage – money makes us lazy and sandbox solutions don’t work in the real world. (The lack of ) innovation is the symptom, not the cause. The cause may be the high threshold to start something new or the lack of real problems, or our culture based on safety and risk-control?
I don’t know, but I learned that it’s easier to start something unique when it’s small and outside of the spotlight together with compassionate clients then via the usual paths (Syntens, TOP, EU subsidies, etc…)
(sorry for the bad english)
Innovation Reading
Recently I wrote about how I see a gap between how I view innovation and how it is generally being discussed here in the Netherlands. I also mentioned I am currently reading up on innovation and I thought I’d share…
The problem i see ‘inovation’ as talked about, wrote about is: ‘inovation’ is equate to ‘invention’. But is it?
Most of us ‘inovate’ all the time, but if it not BIG enough that can be noticed, it is not ‘inovation’, it is NOT new idea.
Before the craz about ‘inovation’ (the same I feel about all these talks about knowledge management), does it mean that we NEVER inovate? I think the more we talk about things such as inovation, KM, trust, the more we are confusing the ‘average person’. THe more we confuse them, the more they become wondering if the belong to the ‘inovative’ society. All these talks about inovation actually kills inovation. People become scares of doing things that is wrong in the eyes of all these talks from clever researchers.
All these reminds me of the time I took an appetitude test to be a software programmer. In 1980. The report came back and told me/my manager the tests shown that I can do ‘simple thing’. I did not get the job of course. Worse still that same casual remark crashed me. For years I walked around wondering how simple is simple enough for me to manage.
And if such a report can crashed a person who has a strong personality like me, can one imagine what it would do to anyone who has lesser self-confidence?
In my observation, we as a people, has one thing to learn: to be less of an individual, and more as a team player and support one another. No matter how clever or inovative you think you are, you need others to support you and your ideas. Inovation can never happen from the idea of JUST ONE SINGLE person. That I think is what is missing in most of the discussions that I read.
Cindy