The May 23, 2012 Wall Street Journal had a feature article titled, “You Call That Innovation?” The article discussed the overuse of the word innovation and noted that in the past 90 days there have been 255 new books with “innovation” in the title (as per Amazon.com).
In other words, the word is losing its effectiveness due to overuse. Not everybody or every company can be constantly innovating. Sometimes you have to take your previous “innovations” and implement them.
For many of us, a better word is “adapting.” We adapt to change happening all around us, our customers needs and new technologies. Sometimes this is more important than trying to come up with something revolutionary.
One of my clients told me that he has an idea for a new service, one that will save his customers money and increase his profit (a true win-win). However, he’s having trouble getting it off the ground.
What he needs to do is adapt this new idea to what the company does now and implement it. That means take action. Taking action may mean getting out from behind the desk, delegating it to staff or picking up the phone to call some customers and get their reaction to the idea.
There are a lot of great ideas in people’s heads or on their computers. The fun, and success, starts when we do something about them.