There is no roadmap for innovation
There simply is no “innovation roadmap”. Roadmaps are delineated, logical and optimized paths leading from A to B, on a map (Oh, and someone has already explored this territory to be able to draw a map out of it).
Innovation is discovering a new unmapped territory and it’s a messy journey into the fog. It’s a mix of intuition, observations, tests, data collection & hazardous interpretations, insights and epiphanies, more tests, epic fails, learning, chance, going backwards, finding momentum — or not, and discouragement hopefully beaten by dedication. Messy is not a bad thing when you hope to produce something unexpected, surprising and unprecedented.
But there might be checkpoints…
Now checkpoints. Think of them as ingredients you can deliberately put in your innovation quest, however messy it is. Checkpoints act as intentions you can *choose* to commit to : generosity, humor, empathy, care for details, simplicity or impudence, to name just a few. These drive you to create something new and they are far more interesting — to me — than optimizing a path.
Innovation is both serendipity and hard work, but surely nothing you can compare to a roadmap. Remember: the map does not exist yet and anyway, you WANT to get off track.
