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Point of View:William Buxton
Innovation vs. Invention
There is no question in my mind that with
appropriate management, we can improve
the levels of innovation and creativity
within organizations. There is no magic
here. Innovative people are no more ‘born’
than Olympic gold medallists or virtuoso
musicians. Yes, some of us are gifted
with more initial aptitude, but as music
and sports show, the ‘natural’ or the ‘child
prodigy’ frequently does not graduate to
the top level. Hard, focused and appropriately-
directed work trumps natural talent
in virtually every case. The question is,
where to focus? Let us start by looking at
the anatomy of the beast.
One key lesson that I took away from
Lester Thurlow’s book, Head to Head, is
the observation that, “Innovation in process
trumps innovation in product.” Thurlow
was contrasting the research investment
strategies between the U.S. and Japan in
the post-war years. His observation was
that the U.S. took a materialistic approach
to their investment, focusing on products,
while the Japanese focused on process. His
observation was that while the U.S.
invented DRAM, the VCR or the LCD, it
also incurred the highest up-front costs,
while the Japanese reaped the primary
profit due to their superior processes of
manufacturing and distribution.
Today, we have a comparable example
in Apple and Dell. Apple is now below
Acer in PC market share, but they have
beautiful, design-intense systems. Dell’s
computers, on the other hand, are boring
and have virtually no technical or design
innovation. But Dell’s process has given
them a dominant market share. Some business
publications (e.g., Fast Company, Jan.
2004) have come to the dubious conclusion
that this says that innovation may not be all
that it was cracked up to be. Of course,
what they miss are two things: (a) the distinction
between innovation in product and
process, and (b) the following rule, which I
have decided to decree: innovation in
process + design trumps innovation in
process alone.
This, of course, should be obvious,
but it sure went over the head of the
Fast Company writers. If you want to
compete with Dell, ‘all’ you have to do is
match or exceed their innovation in manufacturing
and service, and do so with
innovative products.
To find an example that illustrates this,
we need look no farther than, yet again,
Apple. Forget their PC business for the
moment. In the music business, in which
both Dell and Apple are competing, Apple
is the hands-down winner. While Dell has
relied on their previously successful formula
of efficient process, but boring
design,Apple has triumphed on both fronts
in their iTunes and iPod product lines.
Apple not only dominates the music market,
their sales in that sector now exceed
those of their PCs – transforming the very
nature of the company, to the point where
the tag-line on their new iMac computer is,
“From the company that brought you the
iPod.” This, despite the iPod being launched
only in 2001 – 24 years after their first
computer, the Apple II, in 1977!
Let’s look at another aspect of all of
this, the difference between ‘innovation’
and ‘invention’. The closer one gets to
Route 128 in Boston and Silicon Valley, the
more it seems that people confuse the two.
Too often the obsession is with ‘inventing’
something totally unique, rather than
extracting value from the creative understanding
of what is already known.
In a recent study, the U.S. National
Research Council tracked a number of
telecommunications and computer technologies
from first conception to the point
where they reached a billion dollar industry.
The key thing to note is that the average
time from invention to market was 20-plus
years. So much for fast moving tech sector!
Which brings us to one of the most insightful
quotes that I have encountered, from
William Gibson: “The future is already
here. It is just not uniformly distributed.”
Here is the business lesson: innovation
is far more about prospecting, mining,
refining and adding value to ‘gold’ than it is
about alchemy. Rather than focusing on
the invention of the ‘brand new’, one
might better strive for creative insights on
how to combine, develop and leverage
Innovation is far more about prospecting, mining, refining
and adding value than it is about pure invention.http://www.billbuxton.com/innovationInvention.pdfVoting 0 -
Innovation vs. invention: Knowing the difference makes a difference Ogan Gurel September 18, 2007 Comments Send article Digg this story Reprints RSS/subscribe Add to Delicious Editor's note: This is the first part of a three-part series on innovation written by MedTech Futures columnist Dr. Ogan Gurel. This column discusses innovation and, in particular, distinguishes it from invention. The second and third parts will discuss the elements of fostering innovation and accelerating development. Consonant with the etymological origin of the word, “innovation” implies the creation of something new. In this regard, innovation is often equated with invention. However, the two definitions - innovation and invention - have been evolving.http://wistechnology.com/articles/4184Voting 0
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Miller, the brainchild behind NC State's successful Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, believes nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit in the business creators of tomorrow starts with outreach to students in middle school and high school today. Nurturing mhttp://ncsu.edu/newsletter/archive/2008/11/innovation.phpVoting 0
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ribbonfarm — the business of innovationhttp://www.ribbonfarm.com/Voting 0
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In today's dynamic and globalized markets, the ability of continuously innovate and develop new products has become crucial for many companies. Researchers could show that – among others – a structured process and the availability of information acthttp://ilab.sourceforge.net/Voting 0
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TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.http://www.ted.com/index.php/Voting 0
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Welcome to a database full of creative and original ideas. The Creativity Pool is the home of future innovation and tomorrow's most (in)famous inventions. This service is basically free and works like the penny cup next to the cash register. Have a brillhttp://www.creativitypool.com/Voting 0
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Strategyn is a pioneer and leader in Outcome-Driven Innovation® — a methodology that transforms innovation management from an unstructured process into a predictable, rules-based discipline – bringing lower costs and high success rates to companies shttp://www.strategyn.com/Voting 0
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2007 R&D Scoreboard in the UKhttp://www.innovation.gov.uk/rd_scoreboard/Voting 0
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