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

LESSONSTO TAKE AWAY

Innovators can see the future in the present. (Their ability to imagine what’s next comes from their keen awareness and understanding of what is happening now.)

Think about how much difference a decade will make to your business. (No company or industry on earth can expect the future to be a linear extrapolation of the past.)

Is your company changing as fast as the world is changing? (Business success is increasingly transient; it must be rapidly and incessantly renewed if it is to be sustained.)

Innovation is a race for tomorrow. (You need to work hard to recognize emerging opportunities, then move fast to capture the maximum share of those opportunities.)

Trends and discontinuities are patterns of change. (They may be almost imperceptible at first, but if you begin to join the dots and scale things up, you might be able to sense a disruptive development in the making.)

Innovators are wave riders. (At the right time, they attach their business to the gathering momentum of the change curve, thus multiplying their chances for growth and for industry disruption.)

Try to understand and harness the forces that could fundamentally transform your industry. (Make sure you are always learning about what’s new and what’s next. Don’t let internal issues blind you to what is happening in the external environment.)

What will be the next big thing for your business? (Is your company up there riding the waves of change, or is it lying on the beach waiting ...