Innovating the definition of innovation
Posted May 30th, 2009 in Developers by Bartosz JablonskiRecently we have had a very interesting discussion with the CEO of PGS Software about innovation. It started from one of the most popular questions nowadays: “What does it mean, that something is innovative?”.
The reference definition, which we used, was the one, which is meant to be the official statement saying “technology can be called innovative if it has not been in use for more than xxx years…”. Useful as this definition is for official purposes, it does not really give you the practical meaning of the innovation.
If you think about innovative products, which are so common currently… The statement, that Google or Skype are innovative applications, is obvious. The core question (not only in this case) is “Why is that?”. Is Skype innovative, because it uses some rocket science technology or newly created algorithms for voice transmission? Recently Skype is improving its transmission quality, servers availability and similar points within user experience area. However when Skype was launched, it was using commonly known voice compression and transmission methods. It was just the “Internet telephony, which just works”. Some of the students are using more sophisticated algorithms in their master thesis, than those, which were used for the first version of Skype.
The key thing is that “it just works”. Skype developers know, how to put all things together to create something working. And the result was that everybody started to use it. After couple of years millions of people are using Skype as their primary communication channel. Because using it is cheaper, easier, more comfortable… Because you can call your buddy in Australia as easily as contact your wife or parents living in the same city. Life of millions of people changed. Similarly with Google, cell phones, e-mails, PDAs and so on…
What is the main reason, why Skype or Google are meant to be innovative then? It is not because they are developing rocket science technology (however I am sure, that currently those companies invest millions of dollars into their R&D departments). The main reason is that life of people changed in many ways, because they started to use those products. A lot of habits changed, many areas of life improved. This is far more practical definition of innovation.
At the PGS Software we are using the latest technology, which combined with our experience leads to amazing applications. However, the main reason, why we call PGS an innovative company is, that we bring innovative solutions to the business of our customers. We are not only preparing a piece of software basing on already received specification. In many cases we implement a completely new process into the company of our customer – starting from the analysis of its needs and finishing on the implementation of process innovation. As a result the business of our customer changes – it becomes more competitive with improved quality and performance. Similarly as the life of many people changed, when they started to use Skype or Google.
Tags: definition, discussion, innovation, process, technology
