Innovation has become the buzzword of the decade in the worlds of business and education. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, Fortune 500 companies, universities, and local school systems all agree that it is the key to the future. Like Miss America contestants wanting world peace, the term “innovation” has become the canned response of executives, politicians, and educators to the question, “What do we need to be successful?”
The overuse and generalization of the term “innovation” has led to a loss of understanding of what it is we need when we say we need more innovation. We lose sight of the specific skills and behavior needed to be innovative. The word has been overused to the point that national discussion has become circular, “to be innovative, we have to encourage innovation.” However, despite the hypocrisy, we need to be innovative about our use of the word innovation. We should start talking about innovation as a series of separate skills and behaviors.
The Need for Innovation and Resulting Initiatives
Predictions for the global economy indicate that innovation is the key to our future, and politicians, executives, scholars, and educators have, rightly so, pushed for it at many different levels. There are currently more innovation initiatives to change the status quo across the country than there are status quos. President Obama and the White House have a strategy for innovation calling it “the foundation of American economic growth and national competitiveness.” There are also innovation initiatives stretching from MIT to the economic development partnership of Missoula, Montana and beyond. With all of these initiatives, we should have our fill of innovation. However, study after study, poll after poll, shows an increasingly unmet demand.
The push for innovation resulted from our understanding that human advancements over the past few decades are increasing our reliance on technology, shrinking the world, and leveling the field of competition globally. These changes were highlighted in Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and have been discussed at length in the last several years. To be competitive in this changing world, we have put an emphasis on coming up with new ideas, products, and services that add value. We have called this solution, “innovation”.
What is Really Needed to Solve the Problem?
In the education debate, we find the term “21st Century skills”, in business, we have seen lists of innovative skills in books such as the Innovator’s DNA or Daniel Pink’s work stressing the need for right-brained skills in the new global economy. While there are different names for the various skills depending on where you look, we can see common threads throughout the discussion that help us to understand what we mean by “innovation.” In general, when we say we need innovation in order to remain competitive in the global economy, what we really mean, is that we need Americans to think and act as innovators.
Specifically, we need people to possess a series of thinking skills and behavioral traits that result in their ability to discover, develop, and test ideas and solutions that will result in positive changes not only their prospective fields but also in their daily lives. Therefore, innovation should not be discussed as a specific term but as a series of skills and behaviors that a person must possess to be innovative. To be truly innovative, you need a combination of critical, conceptual, creative, reflective, and visionary thinking skills combined with behavioral traits such as curiosity, resilience, the ability to collaborate, and the development of both observation and communication skills. While this list can be modified, the main point is that innovation is mostly used as a slogan with no substance and should be seen as a process.
The good news is that all of the skills and behaviors needed to be innovative are teachable. A person can learn to think critically, to look for patterns, and to realize that failure is only a temporary setback. Students and employees can be encouraged to seek different experiences and new areas of study, to work together, and to feed their curiosity. Teachers and bosses can be shown how to reward innovative skills and start producing students and employees that exhibit these skills.
Innovation has become the new buzzword, but its overuse and generalization has caused more instances of eye rolling than actual innovation. To get the results we need, the focus should shift from the term to the skills and behaviors that are needed. The word “innovation” is not important. To paraphrase a famous innovator from literature, “innovation by any other name, is just as innovative.”
Michael O’Bryan is a former intelligence analyst and founder of the innovation consulting company 360 Thinking.
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