Joyce Wycoff offers up a Good Morning Thinkers!: Defining Innovation>modified definition of innovation. Here’s her definition:
Innovation Requires:
PEOPLE using new knowledge and understanding
to experiment with new possibilities
in order to implement new concepts
that create new value.
We believe this definition emphasizes the importance of gathering new knowledge and understanding before trying to find solutions and the concept of experimenting with possibilities in order to test them against reality.
I think this dovetails nicely into the IDEO design process I outlined below. The first step in their process involves observing and understanding the consumer or as Joyce puts it, “gathering new knowledge and understanding”.