Can we Plan for Innovation?

As a graduate student, I am in the business of research. So how does one define research? To put it simply it is the search for “new information and understanding of phenomenon, concepts etc”. Now to seek new information, one must “innovate” i.e. “a creation (a new device or process) resulting from study and experimentation”. So now how can we then plan to innovate? Is innovation always something that hits one when one is in the shower, or when one is taking a long walk etc, or is it something that can be planned, I have had mixed feelings about this subject since a long time. I have always approached innovation as something that as the adage puts it “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. During Graduate school, I have learnt to appreciate the approach to research which involves developing ‘hypotheses’ and then designing experiments to verify them. Now in addition to the ‘Hypothesis’ driven approach there is another approach which was expounded by Dr Frank Bacon Jr. (http://www.plannedinnovation.com/) in an excellent presentation, that I had the privilege of attending. The beauty of this approach lies in its ability to ask critical questions about an existing product and then to develop a new approach/extensions that will solve existing problems with the product/process. The best part of the approach I felt was its ability to institutionalize this approach so that innovation can be built into a nice model for use by everyone. I was impressed by the examples of the products for which this approach has worked. Of course there were some where in the approach failed miserably but due to reasons other than the approach itself.

This has set me thinking that “innovation” is something that can be carefully planned for and sometimes all you need is to start asking the right sorts of questions and lo and behold there are ways to create and develop extensions and solve problems. It does not have to be the exact approach suggested by Dr Bacon and others, it can start with one’s own unique approach. After all who better understands the product/process better than oneself.