Daily Kaizen: February 18th, 2018

Innovate By Renovate

Writing about the idea of innovation, the psychologist Robert Mauerer said

"When people want to change, they usually turn first to the strategy of innovation...using the term here as it’s defined by business schools, where the vocabulary of success and change is highly specific. According to this definition, innovation is a drastic process of change. Ideally, it occurs in a very short period of time, yielding a dramatic turnaround. Innovation is fast and big and flashy; it reaches for the largest result in the smallest amount of time."

All of us our familiar with NIssan's tagline "Innovation that Excites." Innovation is practically always perceived as positive and this is not without warrant. Most of the time, when we are introduced to businesses, products, or anything that is tagged as "innovative" we are often introduced to something new, exceptional, or ground breaking. The whole point of being innovative is being more creative, more brilliant, more...everything, than the competition. Therefore innovation is often a competitive race to the top as Dr. Mauerer pointed out--big, fast, and flashy. However, innovation when done incorrectly comes at a premium.

Attempting to reach an end goal, especially a big one in the shortest possible time often requires especially large commitments. We are often caught up in the whirlwind of excitement and inspiration when pursuing a goal that we overlook the little things that will inevitably help us reach that end goal. People attempting to lose weight "fast" make drastic changes to their diets or embark upon impossibly rigorous exercise routines. People with behavioral addictions such as smoking read one of those "success" stories of a former addict dropping the habit overnight and believe that they can do it to. A new entrepreneur caught up in the excitement of starting a business signs up for every program under the sun only to find him or herself thoroughly confused by the bottomless pit of contradictory information.

Start where you are, with what you have, and build out. I call this "innovating by renovating." I have used it and am currently using this idea as I slowly build the foundation for my online and offline enterprises.

It may take longer, perhaps, but appreciating that sometimes innovation is the result of taking the things that we already have, repurposing them, and then applying them in new channels may be the means to garnering that flash of insight and creativity that leads to true innovation.