Innovation: What is it and why do some companies still fear it?

Innovation often comes out as a complicated word. People seem to see it as a mental marathon. Companies fear it. It is understood as something that doesn’t come easy. Actually it doesn’t.

But being innovative takes time and it involves a lot of failure… Or at least hitting a few bumps on the road. However, when done right, it drives the productivity of a business. It can help you grow and improve. It’s a necessity for twenty-first century business.

“For me it is not only creating something new but also improving something that already exists. It is making ideas happen and mostly it includes some failure till you get to the right outcome.”

-Madara, Ideanote PR & Branding

Five Stages of Innovative Processes

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, there are 5 stages of innovation:

Stage 1: Idea generation and mobilisation – Everything starts with an idea. And everyone has ideas, right? Idea generation is a starting point of any creative process. When a new idea is generated, it goes into the mobilization stage. It travels to different physical or logical locations. Ideas often need someone else than their originator, in order to keep moving – not every inventor is also a marketer.

Stage 2: Advocacy and Screening - This stage is all about grabbing a paper and writing down the idea’s pros and cons. Why? In order to eliminate ideas that lack potential.

Stage 3: Experimentation - In this stage it’s important to determine who the end-user will be and what will he/she use the new solution for. The experimentation stage is about testing the sustainability of ideas for a particular organisation, at a particular time – and in a particular environment. For example, here you can discover that the market might not be ready for someone’s idea, or the timing just isn’t right.

Stage 4: Commercialisation - The authors of September 2006, working paper, Crafting Organizational Innovation Processes note that “an invention is only considered an innovation (once) it has been commercialised.” Therefore, the stage of commercialization is the organization should do two things: Look if the novel solution solves customers’ problems and analyse the benefits and costs of the potential outcomes.

Stage 5: Diffusion and Implementation – Diffusion is getting the final acceptance of an innovation. On the other side, implementation involves setting up the structures and resources needed to produce the solution.

Takeaway

There is a fear bigger than public speaking or dying… OK, that might be pushing it. But still, to many the umber one thing people are afraid of is being forced to change. Innovation involves a change. That explains why innovation can sound scary to some. Of course people don’t want to face failure. But failing is sometimes necessary in order to innovate. If you read what team Ideanote says about the subject, you’ll see it’s not scary at all. It’s is actually a positive word. Status quo is more dangerous than the new idea. Be persistent and make continuous changes. Your future self will thank you. So will your business.

If you like this article, you will love reading about: [Types of Innovation],(https://ideanote.io/ideanote-types-of-innovation/), Human Capital, Design Thinking.