What is innovation?
1. How to understand innovation
If a person only does what others have done in his life, or only follows what others have done, he will always be a backward group. As a popular saying on the Internet: "One million Foxconn employees are not as good as one Jobs." Why? Because Foxconn employees, whether they are workers on the production line or management staff, have produced hundreds of millions of Apple products, but they are all doing things that others have done, while Jobs is doing things that others have never done. This is the power of innovation. Innovation is not only a person's way to success, but also the fundamental driving force for an organization to pursue excellence. If you do things in a different way, your growth and development will always lag behind others. The same is true for a group of people. If you just do things repeatedly, then this group of people will always be a backward group. As a popular saying on the Internet: "One million Foxconn employees are not as good as one Jobs." Why? Because Foxconn employees, whether they are workers on the production line or management staff, have produced hundreds of millions of Apple products, but they are all doing things that others have done, while Jobs is doing things that others have never done. This is the power of innovation. Innovation is not only a person's way to success, but also the fundamental driving force for an organization to pursue excellence.
So, what exactly is innovation?
In layman's terms, innovation is to create unprecedented things. For example, the invention and use of wheels by ancient people is innovation, and the research and manufacture of airplanes and computers by modern people is also innovation; the discovery of the "Pythagorean Theorem" in geometry by predecessors is innovation, and the first design and manufacture of nail clippers is also an innovation. It can be seen that innovative things can be tangible or intangible; they can be complex labor tools or simple daily necessities.
Innovation can also be an improvement on existing things. For example, after the invention of nail clippers, although they have brought great convenience to people's lives, there are still many problems in the use of nail clippers. If these problems in use are solved by improving nail clippers, it can also be regarded as an innovation.
Whether it is creating new things or improving existing things, it is not something that can be done casually. In other words, innovation does not come from chance and luck, but from down-to-earth practice and thinking. Maybe many people think that innovation is far away from them, but it is not. Innovation can be understood from a broader perspective. For example, when we do something, although it is not the first time for humans to create new things or improve existing things, for us, this is the first time we try to do something, the first time we think of something, and the first time we use something. This activity can also be called "innovation". For example, the first time the class organized a classroom group discussion is an innovation in the learning method; for example, the first time we left school to set up a stall on the street is an innovation in our extracurricular lifestyle.
In summary, innovation refers to the practical activities of humans to continuously expand their cognition of the objective world and themselves in order to meet their own needs, thereby generating valuable new ideas, new initiatives, and new things.
The essence of innovation is to change old things and update them into new things. From the perspective of innovators, the essence of innovation is to require innovators to break through conventions and mindsets and solve problems with new ideas and methods.
