What really is innovation? Innovation today has presently become the buzzword for all things disruption and really one of the most eye catchy ways to describe and define your business. Today, a majority of businesses call themselves innovative; they call their products innovative and every other thing they create innovative. But what really is innovation?
The easiest way to understand what a thing is, is to understand what it is not. The popular story of the six or so blind men that were told to define or describe what an elephant is comes to mind; they all touched the elephant from different angles and concluded based on their respective interactions with the elephant that it was a plethora of things — some called it a rope, a wall, a fan etc. The truth is that an elephant is an elephant, but the angle they had interacted with the elephant from had blurred their perception and given them an overtly subjective perspective of it.
The easiest way to define innovation is to define what it is not.
What Innovation is Not
Innovation is not Technology
As much as the majority of people may disagree with this point, it still remains true that innovation is not technology. Most people interact with innovation primarily from the technology point of view and have concluded that innovation is primarily technical. As much as there is some truth in this (as the blind man who touched the elephant’s torso and concluded it was a wall), the reality is that technology is primarily the enabler for innovation, it is not innovation itself.
There are a good number of products today that consist of some kind of novel technology or the other, but have failed in the most basic of ways to invoke any kind of true innovation in any system or user experience.
The blind man touches the technology and concludes that innovation is technology. He is wrong — technology is only the enabler for innovation.
Innovation is not Business Model.
Any product that doesn’t make money is not a product, it’s an experiment, and it is very easy to conclude that because a product has some kind of novel business model or approach to making money it is innovative. The reality is that it is not.
Business model’s are key to innovation, as they strongly determine how much value a product is able to extract from the market, and that value (profits) is what determines the sustainability of that product.
However, a unique business model alone is not enough to term a product or business to be innovative in the real sense. Netflix uses a subscription model that is although unprofitable when scaled to a minute number of users, becomes profitable when a huge number of users utilize it. Netflix has turned this model into a medium of free cash flow for the business.
Netflix’ business model is truly phenomenal, but its business model alone isn’t enough to qualify Netflix as an innovative business, it takes a lot more than that.
The blind man touches the business model and concludes that innovation is business model. He is wrong — business model is what sustains innovation.
Innovation is Not User Experience
I personally think this is the hardest nut to swallow. As much as I myself am an advocate for design and exceptional user experiences, I’m also objective enough to recognize that an exceptional user experience alone is not enough to term a business or a product innovative.
Think of it this way: a lady isn’t ‘wife material’ primarily because she is pretty and attractive, a lady is wife material because added to her external beauty is content, intelligence, and a whole lot of value she brings to the table beyond just surface formalities.
User experience is also the same thing. A well designed car that has a faulty engine may be beautiful, but is definitely not innovative. Innovation is much more than just surface and superficial attributes, innovation has its roots in the more deeper and inner value points of a product.
The blind man touches the user experience and concludes that innovation is user experience. He is wrong — user experience is what simplifies innovation.
What Then Is Innovation
My opinion and thoughts are clear — innovation is not one single attribute, innovation is a delicate and proper mixture of these 3 core attributes in the right proportion to build an exceptional product.
Innovation is a delicate and proper mixture of technology (the enabler), business model (the sustainer), and user experiences (the simplifier). These three attributes when mixed and introduced into a product in a balanced way are what qualify a product to be termed innovative.
The iPhone is a clear example of this perfect mixture — the technology behind the iPhone although not necessarily novel is phenomenal, the business model is what has empowered Apple to situate this product as a primarily luxury product allowing it to make huge margins on unit sales, and the user experience has made it a product that sticks and keeps users loyal and engrossed in their ecosystem.
This delicate and proper combination of these factors have resulted in the birth of one of the most innovative products in the world today — The iPhone.
Tesla is also another example of this delicate balance and mixture — the technology behind electric cars that powers Tesla is exceptional. Tesla’s business model was originally designed to focus more on the luxury market where margins are usually higher to enable it make enough money to ramp and scale up production, its focus today is more on democratization (making its cars affordable to the general public, thereby allowing it to make more sales). Tesla’s user experience is the beauty of its cars and the relatively catchy in-car experiences that the majority of its cars offer. These three factors, when delicately balanced together are responsible for making Tesla cars some of the most innovative products on the market today, and arguably one of the most innovative EV maker.
Conclusion
Building a truly innovative product is less about focusing on a specific product attribute (technology, business model and user experience), but more on creating the perfect balance between technology, business models and user experiences with the goal of making simplicity the core of your product experience.
Inspired By The Holy Spirit
