Principled Innovation LLC

Ten ways to think about innovation

September 14th, 2006

Technology Review editor Jason Pontin has an excellent “From the Editor” piece on innovation in the magazine’s September/October 2006 issue. The article offers innovation insights drawn from the work and perspectives of members of the last two TR35 lists, the publication’s roster of 35 leading innovators under the age of 35.

1. Successful innovators are famously untroubled by failure.
2. Many innovators appreciate failure.
3. Innovators commonly recognize that “problems and questions are the limiting resource in innovation.”
4. Innovators find inspiration in disparate disciplines.
5. Innovation flourishes when organizations allow third-party experimentation with their products.
6. Fragility is the enemy of innovation: systems should boast broad applications and be unbreakable.
7. Real innovators delight in giving us what we want: solutions to our difficulties and expansive alternatives to our established ways.
8. Real innovators are sometimes perplexed by our ignorance of our own needs.
9. Successful innovators do not depend on what economists call “network externalities,” i.e., the innovation is valuable to the very first user.
10. Many innovators become technologists because they want to better the world.

One of the common threads weaving through this list is the increasingly outward-facing orientation of innovation. Instead of continuing to treat innovation as a compartmentalized and cloistered activity, organizations are opening it up to customers and other contributors, the marketplace and the world. It is precisely this approach that associations should follow in their pursuit of innovation, both because it will help us create new value in concert with those we serve and make it possible for us to realize the underlying values we espouse and claim to hold dear. Both elements of innovation–value and values–are critical to its success.

The question of fragility and innovation is an intriguing one for associations. Because association leaders often focus primarily on scarcity and the constraints their organizations face, it is not wildly speculative to suggest they might regard creating less fragile innovations as a more challenging obstacle to overcome. On the other hand, the inherent fragility of new ideas also creates a strategic opportunity for associations to build and leverage their own innovation networks to increase knowledge flows and decrease risk. So, perhaps in the association context, fragility isn’t so much an enemy as a catalyst for action.

Technology Review is a great publication and I highly recommend it to all association leaders seeking to build their scientific and technological literacy, as well as their understanding of innovation.

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