Cartoon of bald guy with shining head

Stop Talking Innovation

Or The Semantic Satiation of Innovation

Have you ever been in the situation where you use a word a few times in conversation and suddenly the word sounds wrong, slightly ridiculous and loses its sense of meaning? This phenomenon is called semantic satiation and it describes what happens to a lot of corporate innovation initiatives: the word innovation is said, written and broadcast so many times and in so many situations that it loses its meaning and starts to sound ridiculous. This is not a good thing for innovation initiatives and is perhaps a reason why some innovation managers feel their efforts are not being taken seriously.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem: stop using the word "innovation" so much!

Instead, talk about the purpose of your innovation. You should not innovate for the sake of innovating. Rather, you should be doing it to keep ahead of the competition, to grow and to improve processes. As I have written in the past, the world's most innovative companies do not tend to talk about innovation. Instead, they focus on relentlessly pursuing a strategic vision. You should do this too.

If, for example, your company manufactures perfumed head polishing creams for bald men and your vision is to produce the best, most natural looking and smelling cream, then this is the primary focus of your innovation. In this case, all you have to do is stop nagging your colleagues to innovate and instead encourage them to dream up exciting, new ways to provide bald men with polished and perfumed heads. As you can surely see, you are still promoting innovation among your colleagues, but you are doing it in a way that makes its purpose clearer, not only to colleagues, but also to customers, business partners and others.

This simple act promotes actual innovation, reduces empty innovation talk and leads to results. Profitable results.

 

Innovation Focus & Implement

The article above, "Stop Talking About Innovation" is one part of an exciting and comprehensive new service I am offering to innovation leaders in medium to large organisations: Innovation Focus & Implement.

If your organisation's innovation initiative is producing lots of small ideas, few big ideas and little implementation, Innovation Focus & Implement is for you. It is a package of services designed to encourage and focus big innovation on corporate vision; focus small, easy to implement ideas on current business needs

The result, is a more streamlined innovation system that results in real innovation rather than too many ideas.

Learn more about Innovation Focus & Implement here...

Or, get in touch and tell me about your situation.

 

 



Recent Articles

Leading Diverse Teams
Filed under: Business Innovation
Diverse teams are more innovative and smarter than homogeneous ones. But, they are also harder to manager. Here are some tips. By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Questions you should ask when an innovative project fails
Filed under: Business Innovation
You can learn a lot from the failure of an innovative project, but you need to ask the right questions. Here are those questions. By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Unmarketing the Competition
Filed under: Business Innovation
A look at creative, but unethical dirty trick marketing campaigns designed to damage the competition By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Imaginativefulness and the Fisherman
Filed under: Creativity
What does a fisherman wearing a cycling helmet have to do with imaginativefulness? Quite a lot, it seems. By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Actually, Criticising Ideas Is Good for Creativity
Filed under: Creativity
People have long assumed criticising ideas in a brainstorm inhibits creativity. Research and experience shows that is wrong By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Imaginativefulness
Filed under: Creativity
Imaginativefulness is a state of heightened imagination in which your mind allows thoughts, memories and ideas to play with each other freely. By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Why and How to Exploit Alternative Uses for Your Products
Filed under: Business Innovation
Discovering new ways customers use, misuse and could use your products can inspire innovation. Jeffrey Baumgartner explains. By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

The Cost of Not Innovating
Filed under: Business Innovation
If your company fails to innovate, you pay a steep price in terms of loss of leadershop, tight margins, missed opportunities and more. By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Don't Trust the Status Quo
Filed under: Creativity
Jeffrey Baumgartner has never trusted the status quo. He explains why this is so and why you should also not trust the status quo By Jeffrey Baumgartner -- Read the article...

 

Index of all creative articles...

 

Return to top of page

 

Creative Jeffrey logo

Jeffrey Baumgartner
Bwiti bvba

Erps-Kwerps (near Leuven & Brussels) Belgium

 

 


 

My other web projects

My other web projects

CreativeJeffrey.com: 100s of articles, videos and cartoons on creativity   Jeffosophy.com - possibly useful things I have learned over the years.   Kwerps.com: reflections on international living and travel.   Ungodly.com - paintings, drawings, photographs and cartoons by Jeffrey