In these articles, we’ll explore the key concepts of innovation and how you can use them to drive success through innovation at your organization.
“He creeped me out,” John Warner recalled, as he recounted his first encounter with Edwin Land, the founder of the Polaroid Corporation and one of the greatest inventors in U.S. history at the time. It was 1986 and Edwin had just phoned to request a meeting with John Warner, one of the world’s brightest medicinal […]
“His nickname is Roger, so I figured it must be something with Roger in it,” said Victoria Montgomery Brown, who cleverly decoded Richard Branson’s email address in order to pitch him her big idea. In the end, her hunch was correct, and Branson agreed to be one of the first interviews for Big Think, a […]
“When I was in San Francisco, we did a big public Wi-Fi project called SFWiFi, and we were at an event talking about it, a big community town hall event at a library,” recalls Miguel Gamino, the former Chief Technology Officer in New York City. “A mother came up to me afterwards, and she thanked […]
Problem representation relates to the fact that how we see or conceptualize a problem defines how we try to solve it. Solving difficult, high-impact problems requires finding a representation of the problem that is solvable. If you are not able to solve the problem that has been presented to you, the answer may be to […]
Invention vs. innovation — Many people mistake invention for innovation or believe that every invention is an innovation, but this is not exactly accurate. The key difference to understand is that invention is about the creation of something new, without regard for value. You can come up with a new idea or product and even […]
If you lived somewhere where you made bad wine, would it have occurred to you to make champagne instead? Probably not. But that’s what innovation is: taking sour lemons and inventing lemonade. Consider the real-life history of champagne. Champagne refers to the chalky soil that was very dry and barren. Most people don’t realize that […]
What is the difference between disruptive innovation and solving keystone problems? Keystone problems are the things that must be overcome so that companies who have a nascent technology can actually gain the market through that technology. The rate at which some technologies get better may be faster than what the market needs. Simplicity, convenience, accessibility, […]
The Rubber-Band Principle basically teaches us to discover unseen opportunities for value to create innovations that touch our daily lives The rubber-band principle comes from the story of how Kraft macaroni and cheese originated. James Lewis Kraft, the founder of Kraft Foods, found a salesman in St. Louis who was selling boxes of pasta with […]
