Definition of Innovation

Innovation is among the poorly defined words in our language. A good definition will provide the reader with something that they can take immediate action on. The objective of this article is to provide a definition for innovation that allows us to see it, measure it, predict it, and create it.

Most innovation gurus define innovation as "a new idea introduced that has an economic outcome". Intuitively this is correct, but as a definition, it is not very useful because it describes one unknown with four more unknowns! What is new? What is an idea? What is an introduction? What is an economic outcome? And like Rubik's Cube - if you change one square, the others change too!

We know that thousands upon thousands of little "new ideas" all came together to become, say, that new IPod rolling off the assembly line. We also know that information, knowledge, and innovation are related somehow. Many of us also know that we make our living by what we know, who we know, and our ability to provide new solutions to old problems. We know that innovation is dynamic because we do it all day long.

So let's try something new:

Let's define Information as facts and data. That should be easy to accept.

Now let's define Knowledge as the rate of change of information with respect to time. Any teacher will tell you that the order and speed at which new information is introduced to the student is critical for the "learning" process - where information becomes knowledge.

Finally, we'll say that innovation is the rate of change of knowledge with respect to time. Everyone has had that AH-HA! moment when their knowledge about something increased by a great amount in a very short period of time (those familiar with Differential Calculus should be able to see where this is headed).

As far as the "economic outcome" part; Intellectual Capital is what people know, Social Capital is who people know, and Creative Capital is our ability to combine old ideas in order to make new ideas. Or, information is an intellectual process, shared knowledge is a social process, and innovation is a creative process.

So maybe you cannot observe innovation directly, but you can observe high rates of change in knowledge - a brain storming session, buzz in a market, or a bunch of cool people making each other laugh. Or, if you are looking for knowledge, you can easily identify high rates of change of information; like a good article, BizNik seminar, or a great consultant. If you want to create innovation then put a lot of DIFFERENT types of people in a room and ask them to build that better mouse trap - and see what happens. If you want to measure Innovation, count all the little ideas that are shared, how fast, and how many times they appeared.

If we keep ours eyes, ears, and minds open (our hearts too - can't hurt), all those little innovations will begin to pile up and that new idea introduced that has an economic outcome may just land right under our noses.