THE CYCLE OF INNOVATION

Innovation has become one of today's most popular buzzwords, especially in the world of business and enterprise.

In this short discuss, I will try to share my understanding of the innovative process.

Facts-Information-Knowledge-Imagination-Creative Thinking-Innovation

This is the innovative process.

It begins with the acquisition of facts. Fact when interpreted and understood, it becomes Information.

A person who has wide spectrum of data and information is said to be knowledgeable. Knowledge is the natural consequence of the acquisition of data and information.

With such breadth of knowledge, people can increase their ability to imagine and allow their minds run wild.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."....Albert Einstein

In other words imagination will take you to the boundless frontiers of endless possibilities.

An with the gift of a great imagination comes the ability for creative thinking or creative problem solving.

When creative thought is successfully engaged to solve certain problems in such a way that the solution so created becomes practical; Innovation is born.

Have a great day.

DI

Global Problems, Local Solutions

The world is consumed with the pursuit of global solutions. The quest for answers to climate change, the global economic melt down, the challenge of unemployment, violence, injustice and insecurity.

What I find is there really isn't any global solution. It is my opinion that a top down approach to finding solutions to the global challenges isn't the best approach. The focus should be on developing local capacity to engage and resolve local problems.

Interventionist methods of problem resolution are hardly sustainable. The art of local communities learning how to frame problems, understand context and develop solutions must be encouraged.

It is my candid opinion that focus must be placed on searching for local models and attempt to replicate successes in other locations then we would have indeed developed a global solution.

In summary, my proposal is similar to how complex problems are generally solved. You break them into simple problems, limit the scope and combine or aggregate individual simple solutions.

We need to break the world into smaller units, narrow the scope of our engagements and aggregate local solutions for global impact.

DI

BEYOND COMPLEXITY...Simple Answers to Complex Problems

There are no complex problems. It simply depends on who is looking at it. The truth is, problems are complex when observed from a disadvantaged point of view.

Darkness is generally the absence of light. When situations seem complex, the observer needs understanding.

Albert Einstein said "it isn't that we do not have the answers but we fail to ask the right questions"

People are always profering solutions to complex problems but what questions are they responding to.

When we ask the right questions, then we can begin to seek suitable solutions to problems and answers to questions asked.

This brings us to the idea of properly framing problems. This is the point at which we seek adequate understanding of the elements that characterizes or the issues that defines these clearly established problems.

You cannot understand a forest from within, neither can you understand a maze from within.

The point is "we cannot solve problems at the same level at which they were created"...Albert Einstein

THE CONCEPT OF VALUE

People pay for Value. This point raises the question of how do we create value.

Every time we meet a need, solve a problem or create a solution, value is created.

Value is the difference between benefit and cost. When the benefit derived from the use of product or the reception of a service greatly outways the cost of acquiring the product or service, value is huge. On the other hand if the differnce is marginal then value diminishes and in some cases totally disappears.

Value can hardly be considered without an objective view of the benefit and cost of the experience.

Benefit is increased to the degree that a product or service improves the users performance or experience but can be undermined by cost. And cost isn't only financial in nature. Cost is the defined in terms of how much money is needed to acquire the product or service, delays, errors and effort. Cost generally reduces the value created.

In order for us to really creat value, we must focus on increase the benefits associated with our product or service and reduce the cost associated with acquiring that product or service.

DI