Scott Berkun in his recent HBR blog comments on the overuse of the word innovation and how it is not only used and abused but is often misleading. He suggests that instead of saying “How can we be innovative?”, a toothless and vague question with mostly useless answers, we should be asking “How can we make great things?”

It’s an interesting perspective and one that we have touched on in previous blogs. At the end of the day we see innovation as being about action. So like Berkun, we believe that innovation is a term that can often lead to more confusion and procrastination, rather than clarity and new and valuable outcomes.

If Innovation is all about developing something of value, then realistically the only, and I mean the ONLY, way of developing something of value is ensuring that you actually have a problem that is worth solving to begin with. If it’s not a problem, then there is hardly a need for solution, let alone allocating resources in people, time and money in the development of a solution.

So with that in mind, the common practice of getting groups of people in a room to brainstorm wildly hoping they’ll come up with something of value really is lunacy. And one thing’s for sure, it is definitely not innovation.

Why on earth organisations have this dangerous addiction to focusing on developing ideas, brainstorming and idea fest’s as their innovation process is beyond me. While they may have some HR benefit, this lack of commercial focus clearly explains why innovation fails to grab the attention of the CEO and CFO in many organisations.

If innovation is about creating great things - things of value - and that create value for customers, stakeholders and shareholders, then innovation means an awful lot more than just ideas and invention. It has to start with a clear and granular definition of the problem.

Michael R Johnson