The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking

Introduction

Ever wondered where big,

breakthrough ideas

come from?

How do innovators manage to spot theopportunities for industry revolution thateveryone else seems to miss?What is it that enables them to imagine radicallynew or different ways of doing things that willfundamentally change customer expectationsand behaviors, or break long-establishedindustry paradigms, or shift the entire basis forcompetitive advantage? Where do they get thebrilliant flashes of inspiration that lead them totheir game-changing discoveries?

Building a social environment that is conducive to creativity and risk-taking is only part of the challenge

In recent years, we have learned a lot about the innovation process. We now know, for example, that big ideas tend to be born and nurtured in “fertile” environments—cities, markets, campuses, online networks, technology hubs, or industry clusters like Silicon Valley—where there is a rich ecosystem of connections to make recombinant creativity possible. We have seen that innovation thrives in corporate cultures where everyone is invited to submit or pursue their own ideas, and where nobody is punished for making mistakes or trying new things. And we have discovered that ideation can be supercharged by employing “open innovation”—a popular modern approach in which ideas are generated by external constituencies like customers, suppliers, dealers, strategic ...