We call NetPoint innovative. But as my Philosophy professors would chant from morning to night, “Define your terms.” Just what the hell is innovation anyway? Webster’s says it is, “The introduction of something new.” Most likely this is not the narrowest of definitions to be found in Webster’s. You hear the term everywhere, but who can define it? How can we, “drive innovation in the organization” if we don’t know what it is? Maybe it’s like pornography; you know it when you see it. The subject of innovation has been brought to my mind, particularly with the recent loss of Steve Jobs.
In Cambridge, at the MTA Kendall/ MIT station, there is a plaza with engraved paving stones featuring technology icons. Steve’s paving stone became a memoriam with candles, flowers and… apples. Although most often described as a visionary, Jobs was most certainly, by Webster’s definition, an innovator. What were his innovations? Were they simply the creation of the new? Novelty? Style? UI? Do innovations have to be adopted and successful, in order to be innovations? Walking past the MIT bookstore at the same MTA station, I saw a banner in the window featuring the phrase “inventional wisdom”, a phrase MIT has adopted as a part of their sesquicentennial celebration this year. At first I thought the word inventional was an unsuccessful attempt by MIT at innovating on the English language, further research revealed only my own abundant ignorance. Yes Tim, inventional is a word in the dictionary.
The banner got me thinking about how invention and innovation are closely linked. You can’t have one without the other, like love and marriage. In my own mind invention can be incremental, but in order for new thinking to rise to the level of innovation it has to have the ability to substantially alter the world, at least its world. By this definition NetPoint is innovative. NetPoint and GPM enable the creation of a graphical interactive model of a plan. NetPoint empowers a group to collaboratively play with a full model of their project. The group can do ‘what if’ scenarios, visualize interdependencies, and understand impacts, all in real time. Seeing is planning and when you can truly visualize the entire project, everything changes.
Q-1: Do you feel that the unsustainable “innovations” that are likely submitted constantly are undervalued? Is there a value to ideas that do not survive long term?
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Q-2: The value of a seed cannot truly be determined until after germination has taken place and it yields fruit as proof positive of its value. In what ways can organizations foster the “germination” of ideas to drive innovation?
Next entry to describe Malcolm Gladwell’s take on Steve Jobs and innovation straight from the PMI North American Global Congress