Innovation

Innovation is a huge buzz word at the moment.

Everywhere you look people are innovating; trying to innovate; or are being told that without innovation their company has no future.

So what is innovation?

According to Oxford Dictionary, to innovate is to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.

Whenever I think of  innovation or hear people are talking about it innovation, it always sounds to me like something geniuses would come up with.

And I remember my father always told me “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. Meaning. Genius is largely the result of hard work, rather than an inspired flash of insight.

It’s not 1% inspiration followed by 99% perspiration implementing the new idea.

It’s actually the other way around.

It all starts with perspiration, and at some point during all this hard work, we realize there must be an easier or better way of doing this. It’s the hard work that triggers this spark of inspiration.

As another saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention”. So we need to be doing all the hard work first, in order to come up with a great idea that will simplify our lives or our situation.

This doesn’t mean that I believe its impossible for someone to just have a great idea, I do. It’s just I think there needs to be some perspiration involved. We need to experience the necessity.

So if you’re just sat in a room trying to come up with some brilliant idea, then in my opinion thats not innovation, thats actually procrastination.

If you want to innovate, get out sweat a little, struggle a lot and I’m certain this will increase your ability to innovate.

Remember genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.