Today, I guess most of the millennials have heard this and some Gen Z as well that we all need to be innovative. Companies want innovation and they are extracting it from their workforce, but what is innovation and why do we need to be innovative? How do we become innovative?
According to Business Dictionary, Innovation is a process of translating an idea or invention into a good service that creates value or for which customers will pay. For business, innovation results when ideas are applied by the company in order to further satisfy the needs and expectations of the customers. In the social context, innovation helps create new methods for alliance creation, joint venturing, flexible work hours, and the creation of buyers’ purchasing power. In my own personal definition, innovation is an idea coupled with a plan and action to improve into a better version of the current situation, service, or item. Innovation is a synonym of improvement, change, and new.
Innovation probably started when the first form of human stop eating raw using mouth like a dog or an animal. During the stone age according to evidence and researchers, the early humans used and controlled fire somewhere between 200,000 and 600,000 years ago.
Why it’s important to innovate?
Innovation disrupts the plateau and pushes us to improve further, you need to be innovative to survive life whether in business or personal. Innovating will give you a competitive advantage against your competitors or peers, take for example Apple Inc. and Samsung, they are both technology and hardware companies but they are offering different ways to their customers and almost every 6 months we heard something new to their products and services. Look at Google versus Yahoo, I remember, before, Yahoo was my favorite search engine but Google innovate in their algorithms, they change the way they search and indexed websites, Google created other products that will help their bread and butter outshine the competitors. Because of innovation, you will reach the top, where opportunities are flowing, a higher return on revenue, progress, and growth is achievable.
7 Ways to Maintain to be an Innovative
Usually being innovative will come to you unexpectedly especially if you’re in a situation that you want to achieve something desperately. But staying consistent on being an “innovative” is kind of difficult. Here’s the list on how to maintain your drive to become innovative.
- Audit and maximize your assets – always keep an eye of your assets because these are your tools, your machinery to achieve your plans and ideas. List down your assets and how can it help you, how other assets can help the main goal?
- Check your network that can further help – sometimes it’s not always that you’ve got all the tools or assets that you need. You may look for it through your friends or colleagues and ask them if they could help.
- Stay hungry to learn – harness your mind always, because innovation means change then expect that there’s always something new. Always look for ways to learn something new because, through it, you are adding new assets after all knowledge is one of the precious assets you could have.
- Look at the picture in different perspective – this is a little difficult and you need to practice this more. Looking things in different view needs to have a calm and open mind. Answers sometimes are encrypted that you need to unveil it, as we all know decrypting is always a challenge but once opened it’s a relief.
- Stay to your goal and level-up once reached – focus on your goals, I know you are maybe thinking too advance but slow down and take it one step at a time. If you notice in big companies like Google’s Android, Apple’s OS and hardware they all have “versioning” because improvement is step-by-step.
- Optimistic attitude – you may have read the biography or even a short summary of the life of the famous Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur, inventor, industrial engineer and famously known as the co-founder of Apple Inc. Jobs sketched new devices that would hold the iPad in a hospital bed. He also despised the oxygen monitor on his finger and suggested ways revise the design for simplicity. [wikipedia] It clearly shows that despite his condition, that he’s terminally ill he still able to see ways to innovate and still positive in life.Scientists work over and over, optimistically testing, making trial and error to their experiments to prove, discover, or create innovative products.
- Find inspiration – Drive, and motivation is difficult to achieve if you don’t have inspiration, usually, inspiration came from the problem you’re trying to resolve. Sometimes it’s not always the case that inspiration is easy to find, so try to relax and meditate. Reconnect with your life, go for a vacation, unearth the forgotten hobby, unwind with friends, or even a simple walk.. answers come when your mind is clutter-free and ready to accept ideas to support your project.