I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a group of undergraduate and MBA business students at the International Career Conference held at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. I was honored to have been invited to keynote the conference and also participated in a panel discussion later in the day. During my keynote I spoke about common themes that I’ve seen in growing Aptify over the past 16 years and specifically talked about innovation. One of the main points I made to the group was that you can’t innovate with perfect data, and in many cases little to no data is available at all. Traditional methods in market research require validation of a wide variety of input factors before making a decision to pursue an idea or opportunity. While such methods are quite valuable, they have to be adaptable to the environment you are in.
True innovation, by definition, means you are doing something that is new. If what you are considering has been done before you’ll probably be able to find a great deal of information. If, however, you are embarking on a new process, method, or bringing a truly unique product or service to market, you may not find directly relevant data. You have to be willing to make a logical leap from the intended benefits/value proposition of your idea to estimating if results will be successful. I recently read a great column in Business Week by Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel that speaks to the same general theme.
What experiences have you had fostering innovation in your organization and how do my observations compare to your own history?