For way too long, innovation was treated primarily as a creative art or gathering of ideas. Who hasn’t participated in brainstorming sessions, art classes, tours of successful companies … anything to get us out of our mental boxes and free up our creativity? The sad result remains that new product success remains stuck at about 20%. But if innovation and new products are the lifeblood for business growth, this percentage must go higher. More of the same has not done it, or will do it.
The emergent movement towards innovation science offers a way forward. This fledgling field is taking shape under the guidance f the International Association of Innovation Professionals, or IAOIP. Their first conference, Innova-Con is January 14 and January 15, 2014 at Polytechnic Institute of New York University School of Engineering. Some of the topics that caught my eye are:
- Outcome driven innovation: a new lens for growth
- Product life cycle mangement and innovation
- Business model innovation
- Using idea operators to create new and improved ideas
- Design as a catalyst for innovation
This conference is the first I’m aware of that focuses on cognition and innovation, which is an area that I explore using the theory of mind genomics, the method of Rule Developing Experimentation, and the research discipline called cognitive economics. This one should be interesting.
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