Innovation is dead. Old news. Passé. - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Viewpoint careers advice blog

Innovation is dead. Old news. Passé. - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Don’t believe me? Then you may be suffering from FOBLB   (Fear of Being Left Behind) Innovating can be intimidating. Conceptualisation to proof of concept to business as usual will be (or should be) happening in a frighteningly short time frame in 2017. That’s a lot of pressure to keep coming up with radical new ideas that take time to build, often fail and only sometimes contribute to long term success. Take the Drone for instance. It was only two Christmases ago that the remote control plane was no longer enough fun, so I had to make several frantic calls from all sorts of places and time zones, then drive all over Sydney 48 hours before The Big Day to track one down. After all I had promised a certain gadget loving someone they would get one for their birthday in December, and of course everyone else wanted one for Christmas. (Having seen Jingle All The Way this Christmas I definitely felt like Arnie chasing TurboMan).  Fast forward two years, and is it good enough anymore? No. It’s apparently obsolete. It is too big to carry anywhere, it can’t follow me lik e a newly-hatched duck follows its mother and it’s just old technology. Really? Yes! You see, companies like DJI and Yuneec have been very busy innovating. Or have they? Actually they’ve been enhancing post their disruption. The drone was the innovation, and according to Wikipedia, the original innovation occurred in Austria well over 150 years ago. The disruption was to produce out of the box, ready to fly drones aimed at hobbyists rather than just professionals. And like Apple, they have created the built-in obsolescence that very smart marketers do when they have a cool brand and strong market position, ensuring that buyers keep returning for the next iteration. What can we learn from this? Innovation is a very hot topic that an awful lot of people are constantly talking about. Of course we need to move on, and keep moving, but is it beginning to become something that people do because they ought to, perhaps due to FOBLB (Fear of Being Left Behind!) rather than a real desire to create greater value for customers? In reality, the needs of customers (who come in many forms) are actually what should be driving change in any organisation â€" not innovation for its own sake. Of course, there is still much REAL innovation, like Blockchain for example. Watch  Don Tapscotts TedTalk here, where he eloquently explains what is it and will make you think differently about the potential impact of Blockchain in your world. Could it potentially change your business?  How? Big questions. Perhaps an easier starting point is to take a look at what your customers would really like you to be doing differently for them. Most of us survey customers at some point in their journey, do we do enough to analyse and react to their responses? Are we asking the right questions at the right time and of the right people? What’s the single biggest moan they have about your service, product or industry that, if you could solve, might give you a real competitive edge? Innovation doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul. It can just be clever, well executed, data driven incremental change that is informed by what your customers want. Don’t let FOBLB distract you from that. Here are some other similar blogs that Ive recently authored: Digital marketing: the new IT crowd? 4 ways to grow yourself global 2016: The year of the digital diviners Forget B2B or B2C, its actually You2Me 1  thing  you need to know about digital marketing You2Me the sequel Big Data help or hype? 3 things you need to know about careers in 2020