“What’s the ONE thing you need to improve?”

Executives typically respond in the same way “to derive more value from our companies’ investments in innovation”.

“Innovation” is often confused with “invention” but the key to innovation is “insight”. 

Insight into WHY, WHAT, HOW?

An interesting read in the MIT Sloan Management Review suggests that innovation is often perceived to be an end in itself, rather than the mechanism for achieving a specific form of change.

Improving returns from your innovation efforts requires knowing the type of change you want to achieve.

Context matters.

In this article, three forms of innovation reflect three primary types of required, or desired, change;

• Innovate to Enhance Magnitude – “more weight behind the arrow”
• Innovate to Reimagine Activity – “new ways of HOW we do things”
• Innovate to Shift Direction – “new approaches to WHAT we do”

Whether your innovation agenda is hyper-specific to your role or subject matter, the tasks you execute, the procedures you follow, the business process you manage or facilitate, or the end-to-end enterprise value chains themselves, this is a useful mental model. You can read this article here . . .

Recognizing what type of change is appropriate to your context can help you understand which forms of innovation are likely to yield the greatest impact for you and your business.

Thanks for reading . . .