Innovation — A process and not Just outcome !

When I was putting together the blueprint of Yogurt Labs, I spent a lot of time reading about Innovation and how innovation can be part of the culture from day 1.

We are at a very early stage of our start-up and whether we will succeed in building a culture of innovation or not — only time will tell.

Innovation is an extremely overused word. Few examples of widely circulated interpretation are as follows,
“Innovation is when you solve a real-world problem for real people.”
“Innovation is when you figure out a better way of doing something that has not done before.”
“Innovation is when you create a new market/product that allows people to do and experience things which were not possible before.”

They all make sense right?

But if Innovation needs to be a part of the culture and not just part of a start-up or product pitch line then it’s essential to make it more intrinsic.

One more thing, above definitions, somehow describe innovation as a characteristic of outcome or outcome itself. Whereas anyone who has done this before will tell you, innovation is more of the process than outcome.

Recently, I came across the book, “Ten Types of Innovation,” although the name is little cheesy, the book is surprisingly good. I designed our Innovation framework by using the following definition from the book.

“”Innovating requires IDENTIFYING the problems that MATTER and MOVING THROUGH THEM systematically to DELIVER ELEGANT solutions.”

To decipher definition further :

IDENTIFYING: Knowing where to innovate is as essential as knowing how to.
MATTER: Tackle the hardest problems first.
MOVING THROUGH THEM: Big challenges needs patience and multiple iterations to create comprehensive solutions.
DELIVER: It doesn’t count until it’s in the market.
ELEGANT: Turn complexity into Simplicity.

I have written a very detailed mission and innovation culture statement for Yogurt Labs. My commitment to Innovation culture is not because of — its fancy, but Its the only way to solve the big problem that I have set ourselves to.