Must innovation be socially acceptable?
[blockquote cite=”—Tim Brown, president and CEO ” citeLink=”http://www.ideo.com/about/”]Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” [/blockquote]
IDEO co-founder Tom Kelley recently (see prior post – Creativity drives economic growth) elaborated on this concept. Sharing decades worth innovation research.
Design thinking covers three overlapping concepts: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. But more importantly for innovation to happen three things [highlight3]must[/highlight3] exist:
[fancy_list style=”bullet_list”]
- People must find the innovation desirable
- The innovation must be technically feasible
- Finally, there must be a viable business model[/fancy_list]
With IDEO focused on new product innovation, these make complete sense.
But innovations are not limited to just commercial products and services for sale. Innovation is not just products but also ideas. Ideas do not need to be commercially viable. They just need to be socially viable. Meaning an idea has to be acceptable to a group of people – an online group, a department, a club etc…
For example, Galileo, asserted that the sun was the center and not the earth. The Catholic church took nearly 400 years to accept the idea.
Consider today’s Green and Organic movements, both are commercially viable only because they are now socially viable.
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