« Embracing Innovation As A Religion AND As A Process |
Main
| Open Innovation named top book of the year »
December 19, 2003
Agreed: Innovation is a process
Posted by Joyce Wycoff
I agree with Renee’s point that innovation is a mindset and a process. As a matter of fact, I think it’s one of the reasons this field is so interesting … and challenging. It requires a holding of the tensionbetween two opposites in several ways … we have to be committed to measuring results while also understanding that innovation, by definition, means doing something new that could fail and, if it’s new enough, has an outcome that probably cannot be accurately predicted. It means being able to hold the integrity of the entire system while exploring the pieces and parts. It requires high touch as much as high tech and the engagement of the imagination and possibility thinking as much as it does the practical, analytical evaluation of concepts.
Even thinking about innovation is an exercise in opposites:
Innovation is new. It requires new ways of thinking, new ways of operating and measuring and monitoring progress.
Innovation is old. Humans, and arguably other species also, have been doing it for millions of years. The interesting thing about innovation is it is seldom "either/or” and almost always "both/and."
So it is new, while at the same time, it is old. It is imaginative and intuitive while also practical and analytical. It is science and art, mindset and process.
Dontcha just love it!? Actually that’s part of the dichotomy also … some of us love it … and it makes some of us crazy! Perhaps it’s a hologram of the world at large and that rich complexity draws us and repels all in the same moment.
Comments (0)
| Category: Innovation, General
- RELATED ENTRIES
- › Innovation Of A Tradition
- › We Hear Them, But Do We Know What They're Saying?
- › Farewell from Renee -- but check out the new IdeaFlow blogroll!
- › Supernova 2007 blog conversation: It's all about innovation and value
- › Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum cancelled!!!
- › Join us at the first-ever Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum, Thursday, April 26
- › Jack’s Notebook: A Business Novel of ‘Deliberate Creativity’
- › Models for crowdsourcing -- now, FLIRT
Renee Hopkins Callahan started IdeaFlow and serves as chief blog-wrangler. She is 
