How to achieve innovation – 6 ways

Innovation is one of the major drivers behind business success. As an example, the giant packaging company 3m expects every single one of their staff to spend 15% of their time on innovation. This is not just innovating around new products and services but about new systems, new methods, and new procedures. That’s because in a fast-moving world, where people expect things to get better and better, and cheaper and cheaper, innovation is the answer to creative solutions and the route to getting ahead of the competition. Besides creative thinking there are 5 pathways to innovation.

Create an innovative climate

Goran Ekvall of Lund University in Sweden has defined three conditions needed for a climate of innovation. They are: trust, dynamism, and humour. Ekvall came to this conclusion as a result of his research into the most innovative businesses in Sweden. One of Ekvall’s case studies was a Swedish newspaper where the team working on the women’s section consistently outperformed all the other teams. The reason? Quite simply, this group trusted one another, had a high level of energy and shared a common sense of humour.

Keep your eyes open

Some of the major discoveries of the past have arisen by pure chance. In a lecture in 1822, the Danish physicist, Oersted, chanced to put a wire conducting an electric current close to a magnet and discovered an electric charge, thus paving the way to the discovery of electricity.

Necessity is the mother of innovation

Necessity is a great spur to innovation. Take, for example, writing paper. The Chinese had already made paper from rags around the year 100 BC but because there was no need for it, nothing came of it. When it did reach Europe in the Middle Ages when writing became all the rage, the supply of rags and worn-out fabric soon dried up. That’s when a French naturalist made the discovery that wasps made their nests by chewing wood into a mash that dried in thin layers. Within 100 years, all paper was made using the idea of wood pulp.

Test, test, test

Product testing is the way most inventors and organizations go about innovation. It may not be the quickest route to success, but it is often the surest. Thomas Edison, for example, the inventor of the filament light bulb, recorded 10,000 experiments that were complete failures. But he was able to keep going because, as he said, he knew 10,000 ways that it wasn’t going to work. As Woody Allen said, “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”

Adopt and adapt

One relatively easy approach to innovation is to notice how others deal with problems and then adapt their solutions to your own. It’s known as “adapt and adopt”. It’s what watchmakers Swatch did when they realized that the more reliable their watches became, the less people needed to replace them. Their solution? Borrow an idea from the world of fashion and collections by turning their watches into desirable fashion accessories. Now people buy Swatch watches not just to tell the time but because it’s cool and trendy.

Take lessons from nature

If you really want to be inventive, you can’t beat nature. The world of nature gives us an endless supply of prototypes to use in our own world. Take Velcro, for example. Velcro was patented by Georges de Mestral in 1950 after he returned from a hunting trip covered in tiny burrs that had attached themselves to his clothing by tiny overlapping hooks. De Mestral quickly realized that here was an ideal technique to fasten material together. A whole new way of doing things was suddenly invented.

The history of the world is the history of innovation. Thomas Kuhn called each acceptance of a new innovation a “paradigm shift”. For once a new innovation becomes accepted, the world has changed forever and can never go back to the way it was.

You can find more on this topic by reading the free eBook “Thinking Skills” written by Eric Garner.