Coming up with great ideas: the rules of innovation

Coming up with remarkable new ideas might seem something only brilliant minds are able to do, and not everyone is blessed with an IQ like Einstein’s. If we consider the adage everything that can be invented has been invented, we might even be tempted to give up trying to find new ideas altogether. But is it really impossible for the average individual to create something truly innovative? We believe that anyone has the capacity of bringing great ideas to light.

It’s true that all innovations build on preexisting ideas, but that doesn’t cancel the originality of the invention. Everything is an upgrade of something that already exists or a combination of elements that were already there in the first place, but someone found a new way to put them together and thus created something unique.

So how can you tap into your creativity, give birth to new ideas and put them into practice? It’s not an easy process, that’s for sure. It’s a bit more complicated than having an aha moment that strikes you out of the blue. These rules of innovation will shed a bit of light on how innovation really happens.

Innovation step by step

Since innovation doesn’t just happen overnight, let’s take a look at the stages of the innovation process. While this is just a simplistic sketch and every innovation has its own specific course, these steps will give you a basis for getting started and increase the chances of creating a successful innovation:

• Identifying the problem – problems stem from the things that lack in our lives. There’s always a way to make things better, certain aspects that can be improved, an upgrade than can bring value to people. That’s where innovative ideas come from.

• Coming up with solutions – once you’ve identified the problem, you must find ways to solve it. There might be several ways to approach the situation and you can develop more than one solution.

• Testing the solutions – the solutions can look great on paper, but you have to put them into practice and see how they perform in real life. Take them for a test-drive and see if they meet your expectations. Choose the solution that works the best.

• Launching your innovation into the world – it’s time for the final test: bringing your innovation into the world and watching it work its magic. If people react positively to it, you’ve created a successful innovation.

• Protecting your innovation – you must look after your brainchild to make sure nobody but you can profit from it. Working with professionals in the field can help you protect your innovation IP from risks and ensure peace of mind.

Innovation is a process

Just like we demonstrated above, innovation is the result of a long and complicated process. If you’re expecting to be blessed by the creativity gods with a brilliant idea in the middle of the night and wake up the next morning ready to take on the world with your innovation, you’ll have to lower your expectations. The journey from coming up with an idea to actually turning it into reality and making a profit out of it is paved with million obstacles and it implies more resources than one might think.

Innovation is a game of mixing and matching

Inspiration doesn’t come from locking yourself up in a room and waiting for an idea to pop up. Innovation almost always comes from exposing yourself to ideas from different domains, taking elements from different sources and then putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. It usually takes incorporating ideas from various areas of expertise to bring an innovation into the world.

Innovation comes in all shapes and sizes

Innovation doesn’t always mean creating something completely new or starting from scratch. It can happen at all levels, from individuals that have a valuable idea and are brave enough to put it into practice to large corporations who have been on the market since as long as one can remember. Small innovators enjoy more flexibility and can bring a breath of fresh air with their inventions, while bigger players have more resources at their disposal and can develop innovations constantly. So, no matter where you stand, innovation is possible.

Innovation requires expanding your skills set

You can bring your creative idea to life and turn it into a successful innovation, but things don’t have to end there. When you’ve created a great product or service, you can build on it further, but you’ll often discover that doing so requires skills and knowledge you might not possess. That’s why the smartest approach is to embrace open innovation and use outside parties whose abilities and expertise can help you reach new levels in your innovation process.

Innovation involves finding new business models

As mentioned previously, one will come across countless challenges on the path to successful innovations. One of these challenges is bringing innovation to the public’s attention. An innovation is worth nothing if nobody knows about it. More often than not, completely new products require brand new platforms to support them. To put it simply, innovation leads to innovation. If your innovation doesn’t fit into existing frames, you’ll simply have to come up with a new business model that will bring out its full potential.

Innovation comes from collaboration

It’s safe to say that innovation today follows different rules than it did in the past. That’s because most of the problems we encounter in the present are far more complex, so the skills and knowledge required to come up with solutions have to be on par. If you want to solve an issue these days, you’ll have to work harder and use more resources in the process. As a result, most modern innovations are not the product of one single genius mind, but the effort of a whole team of people that put their abilities and expertise together to create something unique.

Cynthia Madison is a young blogger and economics and marketing graduate. She writes about home, lifestyle and family topics and is a senior contributor to popular niche publications.