The document discusses the relationship between innovation and business, emphasizing that innovation must address a business need to be successful. It outlines different types and strategies of innovation, suggesting that originality is not a prerequisite for innovation and that valuable innovations often arise from unexpected circumstances. The key takeaway is that innovations are opportunities to solve problems and should be approached with an understanding of their impact and relevance to the business context.

1. Innovation versus
Business
An archestra notebook.
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra

2. Why Bother
In a business, any innovation must pass the Who Cares test.
Business cares about innovation approximately because it needs to. Without
a need, an innovation is a change carrying some degree of latent interest.
Business is not a requirement of innovation.
But when a business needs an innovation, the key prerequisite is the ability
of the business to host the innovation. This usually means that some
innovations are more likely to succeed in the business than are others.

3. Impacts
• In the mid 1960s, Dick Fosbury jumped backwards over the high bar and permanently
changed how Olympic Gold Medals could be earned.
• In 1967, AT&T and the US Government together created the 9-1-1 telephone number.
• In the 1970’s home equity loans were introduced in the housing industry.
• In the 1980’s, turntabling was invented, an instrumental technique of Hip Hop that
completely reset expectations about future music and spawned an entire constellation of
new genres dominating much of musical culture for persons in the developed world born
during the next 25 years.
• High-powered computation, applied as sequence analysis in biology, created
comprehensive mapping of the human genome in April 2003, globally resetting the basis
for development of new medicines.
• In 2012, the Taco Bell food chain designed and launched the Doritos Locos Taco and sold
100 million of them in 10 weeks.

4. Originality
The importance of being original is highly relative.
• For a creator, originality is a motivation
• For a supplier, originality is a feature
• For an owner, originality is an asset
Originality can occur, simultaneously and unacknowledged, at multiple unrelated
starting points, and wind up converging at the same point in the same innovation.
Frequently, the key to being innovative is the creativity exercised in being
derivative.
Innovation does not depend on originality. Innovation is a predisposition of a way
to get something done.

5. Ideas
Many of the best moments of creation come from chance, from accidents, from
mistakes, and from breaking rules – mainly because those occasions introduce
something unusual into the existing point of view.
Resolving or accommodating the difference can generate unusual arrangements
that turn out to be useful.
So often, the surprise of many new ideas is, nothing more than an awareness and
acknowledgement that the difference is useful enough to reproduce on purpose.
Creativity simply assumes the permission to make that acknowledgement and do
something about it.

6. Dimensions of innovation
Over the course of time, an idea may
change in various ways affecting its
clarity, importance and maturity.
• Discovery
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
defensible
• Creative criteria: applicable
• Business criteria: relevant
DECISION
• Design
• Creative criteria: functional
• Business criteria: viable
DESIGN
viable
• Decision
• Creative criteria: distinctive
• Business criteria: defensible
relevant

7. How to create: modes of innovation
Description
Example and disposition
Model
new logic
Process or technique that integrates functions in an
unprecedented pattern to change the way a requirement is met
Context
new applications
Function serving duty in a situation not usually assigned to the
function
Synthesis
new combinations
Existing elements used as components of the design for a new
kind of item
Construction
new assembly
New arrangements of elements combined to discover or attempt
an effect (often occurs as improvisation)
Strategies for creation can usually be grouped into four general types.
Strategies are NOT mutually exclusive. Tactics for executing the strategies
are wide ranging, as they can be highly circumstantial regarding motivation,
resources, support and available experience. (Tactics are not shown here.)
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
Type

8. How to create: classes of innovation
Installation
Implementation
Institution
Distinction:
creates an effect
creates a facility
creates a utility
creates a capability
Description:
Outcome not seen
before
Tool not available
before
Function not
provided before
Method or practice
not applied before
The common denominator of innovation is the production of something that is
unprecedented for the location of its influence. There is no presumption of
permanence nor of presence outside of the sphere of influence. Normally, an
innovation has worth according to what benefit can be understood by parties in its
sphere of influence. Because of that, Innovations are easy to think about in terms of
how they might solve problems. However, innovations are neither inherently nor
necessarily “solutions”. What may be a cure in one place can be a toxin in another.
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
Invention

9. Value
An innovation may have many kinds of value because it may have multiple ways of
generating impact. It is not necessary to pin down an innovation to only one kind
of impact. But every innovation has significant impact in at least one way.
Examples, such as shown here, are virtually endless.
Installation
(creates a facility)
Implementation
(creates a utility)
Institution
(creates a capability)
Model
(new logic)
Compound
interest
Wankel sports car
iTunes
The Wishbone
Offense
Context
(new applications)
Metal tennis
racquet
Digital camera
Oil-eating bacteria
SuperPACs
Synthesis
Netscape browser
(new combinations)
Assembly line
factory
GMO farming
Fax machine
Construction
(new assembly)
Flying buttress
Cubism
Commercial Radio
Velcro
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
Invention
(creates an effect)

10. Strategy
Creatives being business-like
• Who will care about this idea
the most?
• What would be a compelling
demonstration?
• What development approach is
well supported?
• Who else is working on this?
Business being creative
• If we could be better off, what
would be different?
• What could cause or allow the
difference?
• Where would the cause or
allowance come from?
• When could we have it?

11. Business-based
Inhibitors
Most business “problems” stem from issues regarding (and
sometimes combining) change, distinction and cost. Thus,
tactics, processes and resources are high-impact areas.
REQUIREMENTS
INITIATIVES
PORTFOLIO
PROGRAM
PROJECT
marketing
r&d
business devel.
performance
operations
MYOPIA
SCARCITY
RIGIDITY
ILLOGIC
HABITS
scope
capacity
priorities
allocations
methods
An innovator can appear in any of these areas, and
an innovation’s progress through other areas can be
stalled or stopped in any of them as well. Through
management, each area is a potential host.
To avoid typical inhibitors to innovation,
businesses will often have to adjust current
practices and models regarding foresight, risk,
communication, monitoring, and support.

12. Defining a problem is normally an occasion of recognizing a
need. Innovations are not solutions looking for problems.
Innovations are opportunities to solve problems. The primary
ROI of innovation is opportunity. The ROI is variable.
Business Problems
Precedent to exceed (examples)
a)
b)
c)
d)
Efficiency
Productivity
Assurance
Preference
Innovation as a solution (examples)
a)
b)
c)
d)
Design and Implement
Decide and Institute
Discover and Install
Design and Invent
REQUIREMENTS
INITIATIVES
PORTFOLIO
PROGRAM
PROJECT
marketing
r&d
business devel.
performance
operations

13. Notes
• Eschew mythology. Innovations described somewhere are not
necessarily prescriptions for somewhere else.
• Big words apply to small things. For example, a tiny initiative is still an
initiative, but what matters is if an initiative is needed instead of
something else.
• In business, the really critical success factor is not what’s new, but
instead what’s next. Sometimes, it is important that what’s next is
new. Sometimes, new is not important.
• Unfortunately, business speakers tend to omit the word “business”
from the phrase “successful business innovation”. It’s a habit.