Core Elements of Innovation

5 min readMar 1, 2017

This article outlines the two core elements of innovation and forms the foundation of a process for innovation. Additional insight was gained from our consulting experience and discussions with numerous leaders of innovation around Australia through the “Innovation Inside” interview series published by Marketing Magazine over the past 2 years. This includes interviews with group heads of innovation at both large and small enterprises through to CEO’s and Founders at some of Australia’s most successful start-ups.

What Really is the Definition of Innovation?

Innovation has become one of those amorphous terms that means so many different things depending on whom you talk to. I’d like to draw a line in the sand and provide a definitive viewpoint, one provided by Dr James Moody, who has a PhD in Innovation Theory:

“Innovation effectively is the process of technological change… the thing to really understand is that innovation is a process not a thing. The thing, the outcome of innovation, is the invention. Innovation is deeply associated with business processes, business models and all the different aspects that combine towards creating a new product or service. “

View more of Dr James Moody’s views on innovation and his book on innovation (The Sixth Wave) from an interview with Sidney Minassian in 2016.

The other element impacting our understanding of innovation is that the word has become synonymous with growth as outlined by Mark Payne, co-founder of innovation consultancy, Fahrenheit 212.

“Innovation being synonymous with growth. Companies that aren’t innovating aren’t growing.”

View more of Mark’s viewpoints on innovation and how to innovate from a presentation to the RSA in London (2015).

Two Core Elements of Innovation

There are two core elements to successful innovation.

Insights: The faculty of seeing underlying truths, specifically those that shed light on or helps solve a problem.
Operations: Controlling the process of production and redesigning how a business delivers and produces goods or services.

This is where Design Thinking comes in. At I/O we have based our consulting on the British Design Council’s “Double Diamond” which was developed in 2005 to help align various design disciplines — everything from architecture to graphic design.

The great thing about this process specifically is it’s ability to integrate multiple stakeholders (both internal and external) as participants throughout the process supporting diverse teams to collaborate throughout both the insights and operational phases of the process.

In reality it looks a little more like this outline below if some of the methods and techniques are added to give it some additional detail (source: Dan Nessler).

1. Insights

The first thing we need for innovation is to generate great ideas through the development of deep insights about a problem. We need to search out and uncover deep underlying truths, specifically those that shed new light on or help solve a problem in new ways.

As Clayton Christensen, outlines in the above quote, detailed investigation and interpretation is required to develop detailed and useful insights.

The first diamond phase in the Double Diamond is excellent in helping us generate unique, underlying truths about people and a problem.

In this phase we do a huge amount of primary research. In person interviews with various stakeholders, we “live a day in their life”, we do everything we can to build empathy to enable us to understand the people involved, their desires and frustrations.

We also look at multiple sources of secondary research, industry research and other trends impacting a sector or business — an area that many of the large management consulting firms have made their domain and in which now produce their own research reports. From this research phase we then synthesis the information gathered to identify opportunity areas and creating “How Might We…” statements to help ideation in the next phase of work.

2. Operations

Of course having great insights is only half the equation. We need to execute on the idea to see if it is valid. Operations in this sense is creating the business processes, the value proposition, the business model, distribution to market that enables us to bring a new product or service to life.

The second diamond phase is where we focus on the operational aspects of bringing this new product or service to life. We build, we test, we learn, we iterate and we build again and so the cycle goes until we get something out the door. A new product or service that successfully brings a new, innovative solution that gains traction in the market.

Design Thinking as a Process For Innovation

Therefore if as Dr Moody states in his definition “Innovation is the process of technological change” then we can use Design Thinking, and the revamped Double Diamond, as a process for innovation.

If your business or organisation is looking for help to become more innovative or to develop new revenue generating products and services then please get in touch and perhaps together we can help unlock new sources of growth for your business.

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