Kathy Harris

If innovation is about being first, then few organizations are true innovators.  And, if you ask the companies who are known as great innovators, many will tell you they weren’t the first to think of an idea or deliver it to the market. Instead, they used existing ideas or nuggets and added genuine insight, unique improvements and elegant implementations.

Three of the best known innovators — Apple, Google and P&G – were not first to market with their best known products; instead, they excelled at refinement and implementation. Yes, we know that Apple didn’t invent a mobile phone or the concept of user interface – but they did achieve an amazingly elegant and compelling implementation that engages users and application partners alike. And, Google didn’t invent the search engine but they perfected the implementation, usability and expansion of search far beyond what anyone else envisioned. And, P&G designed their innovation network to focus in part on finding and acquiring ideas from outside their organization. They search out ideas already in use with some proven success and apply their internal capabilities to develop these nuggets into even better products.

So, great innovators excel at insight, improvement and implementation. They focus not on being first, but on being the best. They excel at discerning what their current and future employees, customers and partners will want and need and take existing ideas to the next level. 

It’s time to stop anguishing over finding the never-before-seen ideas and being first to market. You can win more often by investing in understanding wants and needs, mining deeply for ideas, taking existing capabilities to the next level and implementing well.