What is the real meaning of "innovation"?

Illiteracy means a person who has no ability to read or write. The global illiteracy rate has halved in the past 35 years, but it still accounts for 15% of the current population.

Number-blindness refers to people who are unable to apply even the most basic mathematical concepts. Although there is no accurate data analysis, it is likely that more than half of the people will face this problem-it hinders us from making quantitative decisions, and it is frustrating that most of today's policies need to rely on that capability.

In addition, many people have revealed another kind of ignorance--inability to understand innovation and its role. This ignorance is often found in the misuse of the word innovation, as well as the inability to distinguish between novelty, creation, invention, and innovation. The result: These people are unable to understand the real causes of business success or failure, and are not clear about the conditions needed for economic growth.

In order to formulate a strategy, I have coined a word: innoveracy ("creative blindness")--the inability to correctly understand innovation and its social role. I expect this little definition to get people's attention, and then focus on the problem itself and solve it.

Here is a misreading of innovation:

"In the end, the Ilta-sanomat newspaper, which publishes all of Finland, discusses the rumored Nokia tablet, which was developed as early as 9 years before the IPad was launched." The newspaper said the Nokia-owned tablet computer, which had been created in 2001 years, had not yet entered the sale stage. Former Nokia expert Esko Yliruusi said the project had not been fully terminated because of insufficient market demand. "(VIDEO)

To explain what is wrong with the above paragraph, we need to use some definitions.

It is easy to find the definition of innovation, but it is difficult to interpret and comprehend its meaning. Rather than defining again, I tend to classify innovation and similar activities according to their meanings:

Novelty: The creation of new things

Creation: Creating something new and valuable

Invention: Something new and potentially valuable in application

Innovation: Creating something new, useful, unique

The following illustration shows the classification, where the position of the circle shows the corresponding child-parent set relationship.

To further differentiate these concepts, let's look at other examples:

Novel: Gold as a new iphone color; Name the new Android system "Kit Kat"; Create a new word

Creation: Fashion designer's autumn outfit series; a new film; an article New Boven

Invention: anything called a patent; a recipe for Coca-Cola.

Innovation: The pricing model of the iphone; Google's revenue model, Ford's manufacturing system, Wal-Mart's grocery design, and Amazon's logistics

The differences among the four are also found in their respective protective mechanisms:

Novelty: often without protection. But because of its limited value, the damage to plagiarism is limited.

Creation: protected by copyright and trademark. But not patented for lack of applicability

Invention: protected by patent within a limited period of time, and permanent protection can be achieved if it is kept confidential. As for the way of keeping its uniqueness, it is also known as a part of its uniqueness.

Innovation: Be protected by market competition. But it's not defensible at the legal level.

It is important to note that the classification is hierarchical. Creation contains novelty, invention contains creation, and innovation often contains invention. But invention is invention, it is not equal to innovation, nor equal to creation or novelty. Therefore, innovation is the most cost--it needs to meet all the conditions of the four. There is no doubt that innovation requires a unique "business model" to build a defensible nature. In other words, because almost no one can copy, so to remain unique.

Innovation is extremely difficult, but because of this, innovation often means rich rewards. Indeed, it may be much easier to discern innovation only through these rewards. Almost any great enterprise is built on an innovation. Similarly, enterprises with unsatisfactory returns often fail to meet the full conditions of innovation.

The "when and only" relationship between innovation and return can be seen as a begotten of distinguishing innovation. If some attempts have failed to change the world (and thus have not been able to make a penny), you can say with absolute certainty: this is not enough innovation.

Let's look at the quoted text again. Not only did Nokia's 2001 tablet fail to gain market success, it didn't even appear. It only means one thing: it's not innovative enough. I'm afraid the product is at best an invention (if it's unique enough), or just a creation (not even that). Moreover, if it is poorly designed, then it is a real useless thing-and it can only be called novelty. A design, sketch, or verbal description may be novel, but it is probably nothing more. What level it can reach in our classification depends entirely on its degree of innovation.

Why is innovation so important?

It means that innovators pass the test of the market, which means huge rewards for the individual, and for many aspects of society as a whole – all we have to do is focus on innovation. A stubborn pursuit of novelty or invention is tantamount to putting resources in places where the market is not buying. Misuse of the concept of innovation, and those who can not produce value of the activities to confuse, will be ignorant vision, on the road of sustainable development astray.

The first step in addressing "innovation blindness" is to recognize that it is a problem that needs to be addressed. To deal with the problem means we need a "value creation" language that everyone can understand.

Does that sound new?