Innovation comes from the Latin word innovare, which means to make something new. In Thai, what we are familiar with is innovation.
Why do companies need innovation?
“It is necessary for the organization to grow. The same old products and services are not enough. Having innovation allows us to develop new products or new services that better meet the needs of our customers.”
“Our business has many competitors both domestically and internationally. Our innovation is to enable us to maintain our competitive advantage.”
“The original business alone may not be able to lead the company to its goals, and customers have changed their usage behaviors. Therefore, we need to rely on innovation to create new products or services for new markets to increase revenue and profit for the company.”
“The company’s goal is to grow in terms of profit. To increase profit every year by reducing costs or improving work efficiency or production will definitely not meet the organization’s long-term goals. Therefore, having innovation will help us generate income and profit from new business opportunities in the future.”
A variety of opinions were received from entrepreneurs, which were in a similar direction, on the issue of “Do companies need to be innovative?”
But there is another reason, and the most important reason, why companies need to innovate: “to survive.”
Because the survival of a company is the most important thing, especially in this era where the lifespan of a company is getting shorter and shorter, we have seen many large companies disappear because they did not have good enough innovations that could lead the company to overcome the changes.
Therefore, doing business in the old way is completely out of date.
If you want your business to flourish and survive, entrepreneurs and employees must use innovation as a guide.
So what kind of innovation should an organization have?
In terms of innovation, many entrepreneurs still misunderstand this issue in many ways. Some people believe that having or creating innovation is difficult because they do not have ideas or creativity. In fact, such thinking is a misunderstanding because these things can be created.
So let’s take a fresh look at the process of innovation. For example, Tina Seeling ‘s Invention Cycle is a professor at Stanford University and the author of several popular books such as Creativity Rules, Insight Out, inGenious, and What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20.
This Invention Cycle model comes from the book Creativity Rules. It is a simple framework that shows the entire process of Innovation, starting from an idea to the actual creation of the work. The Invention Cycle consists of the following 4 steps:
Imagination: “Imagination”
This is where innovation begins, which means imagining something that has not yet happened or something that has never happened before.
Creativity: “Creativity”
This is the step that brings our imagination to create creative ideas to solve problems or meet the needs of customers or target groups. In this step, we will get new ideas, which may be new to us but may have already existed in other places.
The important thing we need to understand at this stage is that a good idea will come from many ideas. So if you want a good idea or a great idea, you need to brainstorm with your team to explode as many ideas as possible so that you can get the best idea to expand on in the next step.
Innovation: “Innovation”
This is the step that brings creativity to a specific solution or answer. What you need to be careful about in this step is framing the problem incorrectly or asking the wrong question, which will lead to the wrong method or answer.
Therefore, the quality of questioning is very important. Do not rush to conclude methods or find answers from past experiences. Try to find new things from new experiences. This will give us the best options and methods.
Entrepreneurship: “Entrepreneurship”
This means that there must be an entrepreneurial mindset and attitude. In other words, in the process of creating innovation, it is a team effort. Relying solely on teamwork is not enough. The attitude of the team leader must have the ability to motivate and encourage the team to cooperate, help each other, and push for innovation projects to happen, resulting in the creation of new products and services that meet the needs of both the market and consumers that the organization wants.
In addition, leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset can also help motivate their teams to think and imagine to continue creating new things.
“The Invention Cycle model is therefore an infinite model.”
This is a good model that explains the cycle of innovation. To make it easier to understand, the author would like to use a case study, Khan Academy, as an example.
Khan Academy is an Education Platform founded by Sal Khan with the aim and mission to improve education by providing top-notch education to everyone, anywhere, for free.
The beginning of this story is Sal Khan. In the past, he had to work as a tutor, teaching homework and solving math problems for his distant relatives. They taught each other until one day he felt that there must be hundreds or thousands of children similar to his relatives who had problems with math homework.
Sal Khan saw an opportunity, an opportunity to help many children with the same problem. This step is called the Imagination step. That is, after Sal Khan got involved in the situation, he imagined that he wanted to solve the problem, coupled with the drive to help many children with math problems.
As a result, after that, Sal Khan knew that what he wanted to do could change the world. He started to think of new ideas and experiment at the same time in creating online teaching media. This step is the Creativity step, which shows that Sal Khan’s Passion drives him to continue doing what he wants.
Years later, Sal Khan truly understood the problems of the old education system and eventually came up with a new idea that no one had ever thought of or done before. This is the Innovation stage where Sal Khan came up with a new idea that came from seeing the real problem from a new perspective.
Then Sal Khan successfully built Khan Academy through hard work, belief and tenacity in what he did. He also inspired others to support his Khan Academy project. This step is Entrepreneurship, where Sal Khan clearly demonstrates the qualities of a leader in the Disruptive World era.
The story of Khan Academy is a good example that helps us understand the Invention Cycle better.
Conclusion
Leaders in this era, in this era of Disruptive World, must not forget that you cannot do Innovation by yourself or with just a few people. Organizations that want to be successful use Innovation as a leader or a driver of the organization.
Leaders must have an Entrepreneurship Mindset like Sal Khan because Innovation is not the job of any one person. It is a job and a goal that everyone in the organization must support together. Therefore, leaders have a very important role in performing this duty.
In addition, employees themselves need to understand the context of the importance of innovation as well because we live in an era where there is no certainty. If we still cling to the old mindset and work, it means that we are putting ourselves on the path to risk or a dead end of our future careers.
