Let me start by clarifying that if you came here hoping to find an “innovate easily and quickly” kind of solution, you are in the wrong place. Sure, I am hoping that I will enhance your capability to innovate by the end of this post, but that’s just about it. I don’t believe in magic solutions.
A general note regarding innovation (which is also a point that I make in all of the corporate finance and strategy classes that I teach) is that its value multiplies the more breakthrough and difficult to copy is. In other (very simplified) words, two innovations that took a day each to develop, aren’t nearly as valuable as an innovation that was made in two days of work.
Obviously, none of us can have breakthroughs every single day, but staying in contact with the process of innovation, even if through gradual improvements (and failures) is one of the very basic constituents in achieving a breakthrough.
The other is to… look away. Look somewhere else, not where it feels familiar and safe. Look into what other industries are doing. I have oftentimes ranted about how archaic the public accountancy profession is, because everyone on the BOD, are partners of the firm, directly related to the profession. There aren’t any independent directors from other industries to give a different perspective.
Similarly, I recently proposed that it would be nice if public accountancy firms put in their advisory reports the names of everyone who contributed (e.g. in the appendices), instead of just the name of the signing partner on the cover. I took this inspiration by looking away and more specifically, by looking at the entertainment industry, where the names of everyone (literally everyone – even those of HR and finance people) are put in the ending credits. Does anyone doubt that commitment would increase if they knew that their names would go in the final deliverable?
Of course, the above are just minor examples. The aim of this post is to just give you an inkling as to where you should begin from if you’d like to seek ways to innovate. And the answer is none other than to… look away!