Idea analysis
As you can probably surmise from reading the blog posts, we are going to ask people outside of Project Red Stripe to share with us their ideas about innovative things that The Economist Group can do on the internet.
We’ve been spending considerable time discussing our definition of ‘innovative’. The way in which we look at ideas will very much be based on how we define what is innovative. Is the iPod innovative? By definition, Apple did not invent the digital music player. But the way in which they packaged and marketed their player with their own web-based shop front (iTunes) was, at the time, unique.
This Fast Company article claims that Apple’s innovations have been powerful, successful, useful and cool (as opposed to other companies whose innovations have been deemed precommercial, superseded, frivolous or destructive). While these four words are broad in meaning, perhaps we need to only ask if an idea fits these four criteria to call it innovative.
This story about Apple is a little dated - it was written in January, 2004 (it’s funny how the author writes about dim profits for Apple in 2003 despite the success of the iPod - it’s gone since then). I wonder if today’s definition of innovation would vary somewhat, especially when looking at the internet. While I do hope that the idea we choose ends up being powerful, successful, useful and cool, I might not mind that it was precommercial (we could create a business that might not have a business model for another 5 years) or superseded (they still sell the Polaroid camera, don’t they?). I agree that we wouldn’t want to create something that is frivolous but surely ‘disruptive’ can replace ‘destructive’.
What other criteria should we use to determine if an idea is innovative? Some of the questions that have made it on to my list include: Does the idea have that ‘wow’ factor? Does this idea solve a problem or meet a need? I believe that the team’s varied backgrounds will have a positive influence on the decision making - here’s hoping that we can come to a shared definition for innovation.
