Innovation and Creativity: The Idea Alone Is Not Enough

This post is a translation of the original Arabic article.

In this series on innovation leadership and entrepreneurship, I talked in the previous post about an introduction to the field and mentioned that the foundation of all innovations is creative ideas that were once applied in the real world as products and services.

To put it simply, the innovation equation is: Innovation = Creativity + Application, as Professor Robert (Bob) Sutton likes to frame it.

From Creativity to Application

Many creative ideas take long periods of experimentation and failure before reaching a form that can actually be applied. But the journey of application is hard — it takes more time and effort, and it is what transforms creativity into innovation. For example, one engineer spent three years making a modern snowshoe starting from a small idea. Then he needed five more years to get his shoe into practical application, building a new market for the product and collaborating with ski resorts.

What Is Creativity, Really?

Creativity at its core is creating something new from something old (that already exists). That means you can take old (existing) ideas and bring them to new products, new people, or new places, making them into creative ideas. Or you can create a new combination of existing ideas.

Simply put, creativity is finding new places to put your ideas, or gathering ideas from others and combining them with your own.

Example: The Apple iPod

If we look at the first iPod, we find that Apple assembled the device from existing market components and repackaged it with a new look and a new user interface. It took eight months (iPod history on Wikipedia). This is an example of combining existing ideas in a new way and adding them to your own.

Example: The People Magazine Yearbook

Another innovation was the concept of the annual yearbook at People magazine. The yearbook is an old idea widespread in American schools — a book with photos of students and a summary of the year's highlights. The magazine published a yearbook about the biggest events in the world of celebrities and fashion, and it was the first time the yearbook format was applied to the celebrity world. It became hugely popular and enormously profitable for the magazine. This is another example of an old idea brought to a new product, new places, and new audiences.

In Closing

I would like to end with a quote from Steve Jobs:

"I love to live at the intersection of humanity and technology."

That intersection is truly where innovation is made, where people's lives change and improve for the better. (source)

Ask yourself today: what is the intersection you are living in?

Next in the series: Living at the Intersection