Innovation is a word that is thrown around a lot. We live in an innovation economy. The company is very innovative. Innovation is the key to our future. But we're not always a society that supports innovation.
First, let's define innovation. A true innovation is the development of a new product, new market, new service that did not exist and which is a "game changer" in any given industry. There are many examples of truly innovative products in our lifetime. Some that come to mind immediately are the home computer, the cell phone, Facebook and GPS. These are products that none of us had in the past, didn't know we needed, and now cannot live without -- that is real innovation.
It seems to me that we overuse the word innovation. Taking a product and adding a new function is an evolution, not an innovation. Tweaking a service to reach a new market is positioning, not innovation. True innovation is new and takes us to another level.
A lot of innovation happens on university campuses, mostly through research. Indeed, many of the innovative products that hit the market come from some type of revolutionary or even evolutionary research in thousands of university labs across the country -- truly remarkable.
But less formally, we all try to be innovative. At Fulton-Montgomery Community College we strive to be innovative in our approach to education, to services, to working with students. We try to instill in our students a spirit of innovation as well.
Innovation is hard. It is difficult to think in new ways. It seems to me most of us "grow out" of being innovative. When we were children we were very innovative. Our imaginations were unbounded. We didn't see limitations to our thoughts and in our imaginations, anything was possible. As we become educated we learn what is not possible (at least today), and I believe that constant confrontation with limits can affect our ability to think beyond what is right in front of us. That's sad.
In many ways we want our communities to be innovative: Can we provide more services for less cost? How do we SOLVE the hunger problem? What do we do to provide people with opportunities to work themselves off of welfare? But we don't work that way.
To be innovative you have to try things. Some of those things will fail. That's OK when you're innovating. However, in the public sector we don't seem to tolerate failure much. In fact, governments establish many rules that prevent innovation while they chastise those delivering the service for not "thinking outside the box." The belief is if you try something and it failed, then you just wasted our tax dollars. Maybe. But only if you don't learn from that failure and stop. To fail and to learn is to lay the groundwork for an innovation.
We're not very tolerant of failure in the private sector either. We make fun of those who try something that didn't work. We hear, "I told him that business would never make it."
Those communities that celebrate innovation, even when it doesn't work, will be the ones that grow in the long-term. They will be the communities that solve problems, not just poke at them. If we can embrace innovation we will transform our communities.