This Innovation Thing
We’re prepping a grant app and getting into the question of what exactly is this innovation thing. It reminds me of my gen ed humanities class in college where we dealt with “What is Art?”
Consider each of these items by themselves. Is it innovative if:
- you’re using the latest and greatest technologies to do something that’s been done 10x before
- you’re tackling an industry that’s stuck in a certain mindset by using principles from outside that industry…essentially, bringing new ideas into an industry that are commonplace and not new at all elsewhere
- you’re not patenting anything
- you’re doing something in a way no one ever has before, but using components that everyone’s currently using in other ways (the uniqueness is the combination of those components)
The answer depends on your definition. But who am I to define such things? Ok, I’m me. Here’s my definition:
Innovation is a process. It’s not about the what but the how. The process either produces something new, unique, different than what’s come before AND/OR produces something that has come before but is better in some way. It may even look and function the same, but may simply cost less.
I could make pencils that look like every other pencil but do it in incredible new ways that don’t use trees. Or I could splice genes but use paper and pencil to write down everything in a notebook instead of using a computer. The former is innovative, the latter is not.
Unfortunately, it’s not up to me to define such things. At least, not outside my own lectures.
