“When I use the word innovation, I think of three interlocking components:

• Insight or inspiration suggesting an opportunity to do something different to create value
• An idea or plan to build an offering based on that insight or inspiration
• The translation of that plan into a successful business (in simple terms, commercialization)”

Scott Anthony in “What’s stopping innovation?”

When you are in technology PR for a long time, you can’t help but feel a little jaded about the usage of ‘innovation’. New feature? Innovation. New function? Innovation. Slight upgrade? Innovation. A little faster? Innovation. It’s easy to slap it on anything that moves in the technology world, and it is done too often.

But what exactly does innovation mean?

The standard Merriam-Webster defines it as “the introduction of something new” or “a new method, idea, or device.” The web, of course is full of contextual definitions: some say innovation has to lead to “tangible societal impact” while others believe it simply captures “the ability to deliver new value to a customer.”

The discussion history behind the Wikipedia page on innovation is an example of the challenge to reconcile different interpretations. And Bruce Nussbaum started a good debate by suggesting that “‘Innovation’ died in 2008, killed off by overuse, misuse, narrowness, incrementalism and failure to evolve.” If one thing is clear, it is that innovation means different things to different people.

In preparation for a brainstorm session, I read a few articles and online discussions about innovation. But I also wanted to get a feel for its everyday perception: “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘innovation’?” I threw this question out there through email, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and was happy to get more than 100 answers, which I put in the video above.

Now, the video is a collection of anecdotal thoughts, not an attempt at a definition. I just wanted to know the first thought that people had when hearing ‘innovation.’ People who responded are either people I know or colleagues/friends/family of people I know – with all sorts of backgrounds. It’s a quick, subjective litmus test on the perception of the word, and I was mostly wondering how many people would react negatively to it. It also turned out to be a nice visual kick-off for the brainstorm session with a client.

I was amazed by all the great, fast responses I received, and actually encouraged that the majority was positive or neutral. This should be an incentive to keep filling innovation with meaning – not just with verbiage – especially in a business context. I also found it interesting that a number of people included in their answers that innovation does not necessarily have to be something altogether new. Does an idea need to be original to be called innovative, or at what point can an improvement on something existing be called an innovation?

Scott Berkun’s perspective is that innovation is always relative : “[...] the trick to innovation is to widen your perspective on what qualifies as new. As long as your idea, or your use of an existing idea, is new to the person you are creating it for, or applies an existing concept in a new way, you qualify as an innovator from their point of view, and that’s all that matters.”

That approach is quite broad. But when push comes to shove, I’d say benefit trumps originality. If something has had a positive impact for a group of people, it may be okay to call it innovation, even if it turns out that the concept – in a slightly different form – has been around elsewhere. And one man’s innovation may be another man’s incrementalism. But it is important that the outcome of “innovation” is actually meaningful to people beyond the one coming up with the idea (or the description).

As one of the respondents to my question put it: “something others say about you rather than what you say about yourself.”

Here are links to websites and blogs about innovation:

BusinessWeek Innovation & Design
BusinessWeek: The most innovative companies 2009
McKinsey What Matters: Innovation
Business Strategy Innovation
Scott Berkun’s essay: How to innovate right now
Scott Anthony – Innovation Insights Blog
Scott Anthony – What makes a company “The World’s most innovative”?
Knowledge@Wharton: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
USC Stevens Institute for Innovation

[cross-posted from highroad.com/blog]

Note: LG Electronics is a High Road Communications client. I don’t work on the account. But I’d love to try out that watch phone…

StartupEmpire already has an amazing lineup of speakers including Don Dodge, Hugh MacLeod, Howard Lindzon, David Cohen, Austin Hill, Leila Boujnane, Lane Becker and Charlie O’Donnell. Watch the video for Jevon and David’s perspective on what they want to accomplish with the conference.

More information is available at www.startupempire.ca and on David and Jevon’s blogs.

Disclaimer: High Road Communications is a sponsor of the conference.

"Science educator Roy Gould and Microsoft’s Curtis Wong give an astonishing sneak preview of Microsoft’s new WorldWide Telescope — a technology that combines feeds from satellites and telescopes all over the world and the heavens, and weaves them together holistically to build a comprehensive view of our universe. (Yes, it’s the technology that made Robert Scoble cry.)"

(found via Don Dodge’s blog | client disclaimer)

I haven’t gotten my hands on the study but a ComputerWorld Canada article provides some very high level pointers on criteria and take-aways. In the article, executives from a few of the selected companies talk about what they see as key factors to success, including:

• Networking through industry associations and research groups
• Seeking the right partnerships
• Building a strong customer base
• Staying close and listening to the customers while keeping an eye on the evolving market
• Clarity of vision

The ten Canadian companies examined in the study are:

1. Apparent Networks
2. Casero
3. Coveo
4. Halogen
5. Idée Inc.
6. Loki Management Systems
7. M-Tech
8. Objectworld
9. Osellus
10. Privasoft

If these [new] technologies weren’t taken to market, their owners may never have found that better use,” Chesbrough writes in an e-mail. “Innovators need to learn how to play poker in pursuing these technologies, rather than playing chess, where the objectives and possibilities are clearly defined at the outset.”

Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business

2) “How Blogging Can Help You Get a New Job” – The Wall Street Journal

Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they are also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from résumés and interviews.

PR Blogger Kevin Duggan is quoted in the article. He says that his blog generates “about one job lead a month”. 

Blogging still plays a minor role for PR hiring practices in Canada. But the importance is growing. Blogging can definitely help people get a new PR job here, too. Just ask Chris Clarke or Michael O’Connor-Clarke or Tamera Kremer of Thornley Fallis.

Photography has become a networked process. It no longer ends with pasting prints into an album. Instead, making them public through services like Flickr is rapidly becoming one of the main ways how we treat our visual memories. The photographic process extends from preserving a moment to an act of telecommunication, with numerous implications on how we perceive reality, how we make our memories and how we create a narrative from it.

If you liked Michael Wesch’s video (“Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us”) that has been posted all over the blogosphere recently, you might also enjoy the concept of Between Blinks & Buttons. You can watch a video here.