“You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization.” ~Denis Waitley~
“An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.” ~Max Planck~
“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.” ~Alexis de Tocqueville~
So today I thought I would talk a little about innovation and creativity. They’re pretty simple concepts, at least when most people look at them, but what do they actually mean?
innovation; something new or different introduced
creativity; the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.
I think that the two words are thrown around too often. Everyone wants to be an innovator, or be considered creative. Nobody really notices that you can’t have one without the other. They’re too sides to the same coin. Sure, if I invented something new right now, you could say it was innovative or creative, but what if it was absolutely pointless. It did nothing functional. Or fun. And it was hideous. Facebook invented the dislike button just for my invention (leaving out the use it just had right there, of course). Just because something is new, or different, shouldn’t make it innovative. Also, notice the key word of all words in the definition above for creativity; meaningful. I can come up with a million pieces of art, music, literature, or whacky inventions throughout my lifetime, but they have to have a purpose, and they have to have meaning.
Innovation requires creativity. Innovation is the outlet for creativity. Innovation IS creativity.
