Starting the New Year seemed like a good time to start afresh with a few targeted columns on the basics of innovation. Since one of the main themes of the blog is to discuss what innovation is, gaining a common baseline on what is meant by the term can only serve to keep us all on the same track. Innovation is a highly leveraged term and is often applied in a variety of contexts, the most common of which is invention or new and novel thought.

So without further delay, for the purposes of this blog, my definition of innovation is as follows:

The process of creating valuable change in products, processes, organizations or businesses.

The key word in the definition is ‘valuable’ and not ‘change’. The thing that makes innovation so different from invention is that inventions do not necessarily equate to value. They will always equate to new, but it is common to struggle to actually apply inventions in ways that create value. You will notice that although change is a part of the definition, change is not necessarily valuable, nor does it always create value.

Please, do not misunderstand what I am trying to say. By no means am I trying to imply that inventions have no intrinsic value or that they can't be valuable without innovation. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am only trying to point out that: a) not all inventions are valuable; and b) innovation does not necessarily require invention.

The windmill, as a very simplistic example, is a wonderful invention. Of course is can be argued that just having one towering high the sky is nice to look at, and that, in and of itself is innovative. But there are several other innovations that have sprung forth since their initial invention in the 1st century, each delivering new value from the original intended creation. Some that quickly come to mind are grinding grain, driving mechanical pumps, driving generators and other forms of converting wind-energy into other forms of usable or storable energy. Windmills can also be used as a sort of windsock, to determine the direction of winds around a farmers airfield.

In future articles, we will explore more details about who, when and why to innovate.