Everyone Talks About Innovation, But I Don’t Think They Know What It Means

I have a few pet peeves, but one is absolutely the prolific use of meaningless jargon and vague notions of ideas. People use these canned phrases and buzzwords to feel like they’re saying something smart, but really they’re making things unnecessarily complicated and confusing.

“Let’s circle back to calibrate on cross-functional innovation synergies so we can double down on scalable Q3 initiatives and remain agile if the KPIs fail to move the needle.”

One of the worst offenders is the word “innovation”. People use it all the time because it’s a word you use to sound like you know what you’re talking about, but really I think it’s kind of meaningless for most people. For a long time, I envisioned scientists in lab coats designing things I can’t imagine and spending a lot of money. They also wear glasses, obviously.

I understood from a young age that innovation had something to do with light bulbs and gears.

This is all so vague that it’s kind of impossible to apply it, which is unfortunate because innovation is going to be the essential tool that helps us solve the climate crisis and live good lives.

So what is innovation and how does it apply to small businesses?

Innovation is just a change you make to get a better outcome. It can be taking a new way to work and cutting 5 minutes off your commute. It could also be taking a new route and adding 15 minutes, but it’s more scenic and you can listen to the entire Midnights album. Or it could be taking public transportation so that you don’t have to drive at all and can do other stuff while you’re commuting. Or maybe you carpool to work. Or you don’t go to work at all. It depends completely on what your definition of “a better outcome” is.

Basically, I like to think of it as moving from point A to point B. There are straightforward paths to get to point B, but a lot of people are probably doing that and it’s a matter of who can do it the fastest. As a small business owner, you probably don’t want to do this. It requires resources and speed and it exposes you to big competitors. Think indie bookstores trying to compete directly against Amazon.

Within your business, you want processes to be streamlined by taking the direct path from Point A to Point B. As a business concept, you probably want to take a roundabout path so you stand out a bit more.

There are also roundabout ways of getting to point B. It might feel inefficient in comparison to the direct path, but it makes you unique and therefore more valuable to the right person. If everyone is trying to get to the same point B, then your path is itself innovation.

These are all valid innovations, though the market will probably weed some out through natural selection

Innovation also happens because of constraints. For example, if you know you want to open a zero waste cafe, but you only have $500, you’re going to follow a much different path than you would if you had $30,000.

When my sister and I started Hickory Town Gardens, we were both working and/or in school and knew we didn’t have enough time to build up an audience on our own. We also didn’t have a physical store and knew we had to do pop-up sales. Our innovation to work around these constraints was to set up our sales as fundraisers so we could rely on organizations with built-in audiences to do some of the advertising heavy lifting for us while we focused our limited time on stuff like inventory management and logistics. There are a few other native plant sellers in our area, but none of them have built the types of relationships in the community that we have become known for. Lack of time and space started as a hurdle that we thought was keeping us from our goal, but working around them is what led to our success.

We can use this definition of innovation to think of ways to make our businesses greener and our lives richer. For example, you can start company X, but it must fit within Y hours a day and pay a salary of Z dollars so you can travel and spend time with your family. Another example: you want to set up process A, but it has to be completely carbon neutral. Innovation happens when you have a starting point, an ending point, and a constraint.

One last thing I’ll leave you with is that some steps in the right direction are more valuable than others. If you’re considering starting a business, making a website or reading a book is technically a step from point A to point B, but they’re relatively low value and maybe even a form of procrastination. You’d be much better off actually talking to people and understanding what their needs are.