What is innovation and how can businesses foster it?

Hajra Rahim
4 May, 2017
Telegraph U.K.

Professor and author, John Bessant, explains why innovation is often confused with ideation, and why learning from failure is so crucial to business success.

How would you define innovation?

Innovation means creating value from ideas.

While a lot of interest is in commercial value, a lot can be done with social value. For the Red Cross, creating social value is a case of life and death, and while it’s not creating lots of money, it’s creating real value from ideas, such as simple low-cost hygiene products to avoid sanitation-linked infection.

There should be no limits as to where innovation comes from. It can come from our own teams, what competitors are doing, and the market. Today, it’s all about what users want and need, so it’s up to businesses to make sure that they have a good set of antennae to pick up on these trends.

How do people commonly misdefine it?

People conflate ideation with innovation. If I have a great idea for a heart valve, I will need a long time to refine the idea, take on
board other people’s input and knowledge to develop it, and require users to test it. It’s a long journey to create potential value from an idea.

If it’s a business idea, you have to convince a lot of people – such as investors, suppliers and, most importantly, customers and end users – that it’s a good idea and, ultimately, that they will be happy with it.