Why Nearly All Companies Get Innovation Wrong

(Newswire.net — November 1, 2017) Conway, AR — In 1997, a computer program defeated the world’s grandmaster at chess, Garry Kasparov. While this achievement at that time was a clear milestone of the future of machine learning, in the past 20 years, the majority of innovation has been more more incremental and practical.

Huge mistake.

Companies that focus on applying innovation to cut corners, improve current processes and add to the bottom line, generally miss the fundamental reason and benefit of pure innovation.

The bulk of companies and executives rarely step back from their objectives ask themselves the tough questions, such as:

• What are we trying to accomplish?
• How are we doing?
• How am I doing?
• How are my customers doing?

Instead of reflecting on their situation from a outside, non-performance perspective, executives too often expend thousands of dollars and countless hours creating the solution to a problem no one cares about or is unwilling to pay for. When companies focus on improving a system vs. pure research, they will most surely miss out on massive leaps in innovation.

According to Jeff Standridge, best selling author of  The Innovator’s Field Guide, “The pressures to create, launch, and execute often gets in the way of true, deep exploration. We don’t explore innovation for innovation’s sake and we rarely assess our individual performance during the process. As a result, we don’t achieve the big leaps that are possible.”

Standridge may be onto something. AI research firm DeepMind unveiled a new artificial intelligence program called AlphaGo Zero, which uses less hardware, is entirely ‘self-taught’ and beat its predecessor AlphaGo, 100 times in games of chess… with a 100% succes rate.

What made this achievement perplexing is the innovation to achieve this feat came by sacrificing the Queen on purpose and cutting corners… its only mission was to win. It was an improvement in process, but not in ideas.

Like most companies who purport to be innovative, their innovations are are also designed to improve existing operations, reduce labor and save on costs. While these are all important objectives, history has shown that disruptive breakthroughs rarely come from improvements. Rather, they come from large, quantum leaps.

Disruption of entire industries always come from a pure form of innovation.

In Standridge’s book, The Innovator’s Field Guide, he touches on the disciplines, processes and methods, to innovate purely and without restrictions.

In addition, there are 52 actionable accelerators the reader can use to practice, execute and test their theories. His book is a rare combination of thought and practicality. Readers can use it to help them truly create a new box or use the accelerators to infuse a team with ideas, action and innovation that may create a breakthrough.

Innovation may be a common buzzword for robotics, AI and technology, but all innovation is born from the largest most complex computer known to man.

Ourselves.