Interview About Innovation with Andrew Hargadon

ACM: Ubiquity - A Conversation with Andrew Hargadon

I really enjoyed this interview. Andrew is an associate professor at UC Davis Grad School of Management. In this interview he debunks many of the widely-held ideals about innovation. I like the way he thinks.

On the difference between innovation and invention:

Innovation is the practical exploitation of any novel idea. Novel ideas can be inventions in the strict definition of the term, which means they didn't exist before, but most often they're not. Instead, they're based on taking an idea that's been developed somewhere else -- or combining a number of existing ideas -- and introducing them to a market that hasn't seen those combinations before.

On the notion of his rule "divided we innovate"

It's better to allow people to focus on the things they do well and only bring them together sporadically, if at all. Another alternative is to keep people focused on what they're doing and give other people the charter of finding the commonality. Keeping people divided allows them to go in different directions, which creates the variance you need later to find new combinations.

Via: Fast Company