Sunday, April 7, 2013

Innovation of Innovation

Question 1: What would you do if you are made the prime minister of India for 2 mins?
Answer 1: I will prepare Maggie noodles. :-)
Question 2: What would you do if you are made the prime minister of India for 10 mins?
Answer 2: Wow, now I can make Maggie noodles for me & 4 other friends and enjoy some good time together..
Question 3: What would you do if you are made the prime minister of India for 5 years?
Answer 3: I am sorry, first answer this: who will eat that much Maggie noodles?
:-)

Jokes apart, I just wanted to set the stage for the topic at hand.. How do we prick innovation? How do we ensure that what we produce is innovative? How do we bring it out in the open from the abyss of our subconcious intelligence?
Do we need to be:
1. Unit driven - mins, years?
2. Team driven - 5 friends?
3. Idea driven - Maggie?
4. Size driven - Small to Large (2 min to 5 years)?
5. Role driven - Prime Minister?
6. Goal driven - To eat something?
7. Resources driven - time, money, utensils, plates, bowls?

In my opinion, it has to be a combination of all of these.. However, whenever I attended any innovation related talks, people talk about generating ideas (the more the better) and seeing how much each idea is worth in terms of "savings" or "dollar value" or "time saving" or "efficiency improvement"... and then rewarding the person who submitted the idea which has the highest dollar tag. Yes, this may be innovation, but how many people innovate using that approach? I think the first thing that stalls innovation is the inherent assumption that it has to save money, or provide tangible financial or time benefit. Was iPhone built to save money, or time or provide a tangible financial benefit to someone?

Coming to the point, I think we need to change the approach of how we expect the innovation to happen.. how about just giving people freedom to innovate whatever they want without putting the constraints of tangible "savings" or "financial or time benefit". Of course they should innovate on a particular problem at hand, and not wander away from the goal that it has to provide "some" "unprecendented" way of doing "something" differently towards the goal of either solving the problem or dampening it. Lets not even define the "problem". Let them solve whichever problem they want (related to work of course, I think we already innovate a lot in our personal lives :-) )
1. Unit - mins, years? Freedom to use any unit..
2. Team - 5 friends? Freedom to team up with others or set out alone..
3. Idea - Maggie? Freedom to submit any idea related to work..
4. Size - Small to Large (2 min to 5 years)? Freedom to not constrain the idea within set size limits..but usually start small and then grow big..
5. Role - Prime Minister? Freedom to assume you have all powers..
6. Goal - To eat something? No definite goal.. solution of any problem through innovation is the only goal..
7. Resources - time, money, utensils, plates, bowls? Freedom to assume that all resources are available..
Something like this may foster innovation...