At the moment, the phrase “innovation” is all the rage.
Everywhere you turn, individuals are innovating, attempting to innovate, or being told that their company would fail if they do not innovate.
So, what is innovation, exactly?
According to Oxford Dictionary, to innovate is to make changes to something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.
Whenever I think of innovation or hear people are talking about its innovation, it always sounds to me like something geniuses would come up with.
And I remember my father always told me “Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Meaning. Genius is largely the result of hard work, rather than an inspired flash of insight.
It’s not 1% inspiration followed by 99% perspiration in implementing the new idea.
It’s actually the other way around.
It all starts with perspiration, and at some point during all this hard work, we realize there must be an easier or better way of doing this. It’s the hard work that triggers this spark of inspiration.
As another saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention”. So we need to be doing all the hard work first, in order to come up with a great idea that will simplify our lives or our situation.
This doesn’t mean that I believe it’s impossible for someone to just have a great idea, I do. It’s just I think there needs to be some perspiration involved. We need to experience the necessity.
So if you’re just sitting in a room trying to come up with some brilliant idea, then in my opinion that’s not innovation, that’s actually procrastination.
If you want to innovate, get out, sweat a little, struggle a lot and I’m certain this will increase your ability to innovate.
Remember genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.
If you want to learn more about creating highly engaged teams or being a better leader click the link to make an appointment to talk about how I can help.
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