What Is Innovation? Part I (Concepts and Examples)

In recent years we have been living through an era that will go down in history as a period of incredible changes in industry and society, driven by the rapid evolution of new technologies. This period is without a doubt a historical moment as important as (or more important than) the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century, since new technologies are changing our way of life (in the first world), although, unfortunately, this “revolution” is also widening the gap between the first and third worlds. This “revolution” has come about thanks to the Research and Innovation carried out over the last few years, but it is only now that we are reaping the fruits of the Research done throughout history.

Lately, and fueled by the times we live in, a lot of people are misusing the word Innovation, which is why in this post (and in later posts) we are going to explain what innovation is and many of the concepts associated with it. So the first step will be to give a definition of innovation:

“Innovation is an invention that is implemented as a product, service or process, and that is brought to market in order to find a successful application there”.

 

“An innovation has no value in itself unless it is applied in some market”

 

That said, how many times have we heard that “such and such a company” has released “such and such an innovative product” and then we see that this “innovative product” has been bought by “nobody at all”. Well, you hear that a lot lately, and it breaks the last and most important premise of innovation, which is that it “is brought to market in order to find a successful application there”. You hear this kind of thing because “high tech” is often confused with innovation, and high tech gets associated with innovation, and that is certainly not the case. Next, we are going to give some simple examples of what is and isn’t innovation:

Example 1: “The Mop”. Let’s start strong with this first example. This plain and simple product was without a doubt an innovative product, and to prove it let’s go to the definition of innovation:

1.- Is the mop an invention? YES

2.- Has that invention been implemented in a product? YES

3.- Has it been brought to market and found a successful application there? YES

Therefore, this product (with zero technology) is an innovative product that we all use (or should use) and that without a doubt changed the cleaning habits of a lot of people, since in the old days floors were cleaned on your knees and by hand, and with the mop it became much easier.

Example 2: “Tablets”: This example of Tablets is one of the best ones for explaining and understanding what innovation is. Almost all of us think that Apple, with the iPad, was “the father” of Tablets, but you might be surprised to learn that Microsoft was the company that first brought Tablets to market. With this example we are going to break the myth that innovation and high tech are the same thing.

In 2001, Microsoft released the first Tablet to market. It ran Windows XP, and you could do almost the same things with it as on a PC. It is very likely that Microsoft spent a lot of resources and money making this Tablet (perhaps much more than Apple did making the iPad), but this is an example that high tech is not synonymous with innovation, and we can check it by answering the following questions:

1.- Is Microsoft’s first Tablet an invention? YES

2.- Has that invention been implemented in a product? YES

3.- Has it been brought to market and found a successful application there? NO, so it does not meet the most important requirement of innovation.

In January 2010, “the iPad is born”, which many people consider the beginning of Tablets (and so do I). This product was presented at a good moment, with an operating system that supports it (iOS) and a set of applications specific to that operating system. The iPad can indeed be considered a high-tech product, but perhaps the effort of its design and development was not as high as what Microsoft put into developing its first Tablet. On the other hand, Apple enjoys a very good reputation and has many potential customers who would buy any “junk” (or rather “iJunk”) they put on sale. Besides, the iPad has a “reasonably” affordable price for the public, so the iPad had a lot going for it to be an innovation. But was it truly one? Let’s check:

1.- Is the iPad an invention? YES. Well, actually the invention of tablets was not Apple’s, but let’s say they "re-invented" it.

2.- Has that invention been implemented in a product? YES, and it has also been accompanied by an Operating System and a series of Apps that complement the product.

3.- Has it been brought to market and found a successful application there? YES

And now I’ll ask you a question. Would the iPad have been an innovation if its price, instead of being around 500-600 euros (an affordable price), had been 30,000-40,000 euros?. Answering this question would be like the “milkmaid’s tale” (counting your chickens before they hatch), but most likely if the iPad had cost 30,000-40,000 euros it would not have been an innovation, because very few people could have bought it and therefore it would not have had a successful application in the market. This “hypothetical” example shows that “high tech” cannot be associated with innovation.

Another important thing we can see in this Tablets example (and in all other products, services or business models) is that the first one to invent “something” is not always the one who will “win” that “market niche”. This also explains the concept of innovation very well: if an invention, however good and incredible it is, is not brought to market properly, it will not succeed there. So even if you are the first to invent it and release it, your product may not be an innovation, and then someone else comes along, copies the same invention, and because they know how to bring it to market, that same product will be considered an innovation. All of this points to a very important concept and characteristic of innovation processes, which is the “Uncertainty of Innovation”[1]. We will talk about it in future posts, but to give you a preview: all Innovation processes are loaded with uncertainty, since the future implies uncertainty, and therefore uncertainty is inherent to every innovation process. So one of the most important jobs of Innovation departments is not so much to come up with a “super-product”, but to reduce the uncertainty about whether the “product, service or business model” will succeed in the market, by studying their potential customers, the right moment and timing to put the product on sale, etc. That said, it is easy to see that when Apple launched the iPad, it had much less uncertainty about its success than Microsoft had when releasing its Tablet in 2001: Apple already had very loyal customers, the iPad’s Apps and Operating System were more than familiar since they were already on the iPhone and iPod, and in 2010 people were more used to “consuming” technology than in 2001. So here we have a simple example of that “uncertainty” we mentioned.

To wrap up this first post on innovation, in which we have left a lot unsaid, such as the types of innovation, the social models of technology adoption, patents, etc., we will finish with a very instructive video by “Luigui Valdes” that explains the steps for a product to become an innovation

References:

[1] “The Uncertainty of Innovation: A Systematic Review of the Literature”, by Harri Jalonen

[2] Part of this knowledge was taught in the course “Innovation as a Tool for Software Product Development” of the Master’s in “Computer Science and Technology” at the UPM, taught by Professor Juan Garbajosa.