innovation, reinvention, rethinkingLet’s face it, the biggest problem that we have in the exciting world of creativeinnovationreinventiveness is the English language. Yes, I made that horrible big word up but I might as well use it because everyone else has their own definition of creativity, innovation, invention, etc.

You hire a consultant or adviser to give you some of the aforementioned and what do you get? I’m sure it is not what you thought you would get! So what is the point of this article?

Well, many think that you should be in one camp or another. Well, I believe there is a camp that we can all belong to. The idea that I believe that we can all buy into is what I call ReThinking.

The sceptical will be thinking that I am inventing another term to try and make money out of. Bear with me and I will explain.

Have you seen the innovation curve that for any technology gives the number of innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). It would seem that a very small percentage of us are actually innovators.

There is another term that has been used by others, reinvention. Here people take a look at what they are currently doing and rework or reinvent either their products or their company. Some might call this incremental innovation.

ReThinking incorporates both Innovation and Reinvention. This seems sensible to me as all of the skills and behaviours that need to be used are common. What is very different is the degree to which they are used and possibly the radical nature of the purpose to which they are put.

What is important here is the type of thinking that is used. If an external event occurs (say a stock market crash or a supplier shortage of bananas) how do we react appropriately? To fully understand, think of the Chameleon. It detects its surroundings and then blends in with the environment. It reacts appropriately.

What the Chameleon does not do is cycle through all of the psychedelic colour combinations it can until it settles upon the right one!

But your business is not a Chameleon, right? But it can be! First of all, you need to think of your business as being organic and not having a hard and fast structure. Whether you go to town on this is up to you, just don’t put up barriers where there do not need to be any.

Although employees might work in a particular department, such as production or finance they can all contribute to change processes that must exist.

A small but powerful example of this is the lorry drivers that transport goods around the country. They don’t just drive lorries though, do they? A driver often waits outside a factory or depot. They are sources of intelligence (or if you are mischievous, sources of misinformation!). How full are the lorries, where do they come from, and which haulage companies are being used?

Knowledge can be acquired from the environment by anyone and ideas can be generated by anyone. The next question is how do you gather them, how do you evaluate and then act on them? This is the essence of ReThinking, constantly thinking about what you do and whether you need to tweak things or react in a more drastic fashion.

As the recent outbreak of coronavirus has shown us, waiting until an infection is on our doorstep is far too late to take action in many cases. For businesses, it might just be a case of reacting to a future that is not here yet!

Innovation + Reinvention = ReThinking