If you haven't already, please look at the interesting dialogue between Jeff De Cagna and Eric Lanke about innovation. Eric is on the Board of the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives and is involved in their innovation task force. Jeff is a consultant whose business focuses on innovation, and their conversation is good. Here are links to the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth posts in their exchange.

Innovation, unfortunately, could be called a business buzzword. Not in the "meaningless jargon" sense of buzzword, but in the "too often hyped and misunderstood" sense. Innovation is something everyone can get behind–in theory. Since Google does it, everyone has to. Sometimes leaders throw the word into their sound bytes as much as "premier" and "cutting edge."

This is too bad, because innovation is really important. And it's not just doing things differently. Innovation doesn't just mean change. Change is a constant, but innovation isn't. Jeff points out that Drucker defined innovation as a change that generates a "new dimension of performance." Jeff prefers to talk about change that generates new value. Either way, the point is that you're really at a new level at the end of innovation. It's really new, not just modified.

The reason this distinction is important is because we are all a part of living systems, and the change is so constant, that simply managing it is a losing proposition. Modifying things is managing the change. That's fine in the short turn, but if you don't jump to a new S curve, you'll end up spending down the energy of that system until it's gone. Change and improvement buys you time, but that's it. Innovation understands that about systems. When you build the capacity in your organization for innovation, then your people will start creating things that generate new value and take you to that proverbial next level.  

That's not easy. Which is why I'm glad Eric and Jeff and the WSAE task force and a host of others are pushing all of us on the topic. We need to do better. And the time blocks we are buying by simply managing the change seem to be getting shorter and shorter. 

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