Definisi 鈥渋novasi鈥� secara ringkas dan malas nak tulis panjang-panjang ialah 鈥渒emajuan berterusan鈥�. Inovasi dan rekacipta adalah 2 benda yang seakan sama tapi sebenarnya langsung tak sama. Berbeza dengan 鈥渞ekacipta鈥� yang berkonsepkan; mencipta sesuatu yang tidak pernah dalam sesuatu masa, 鈥渋novasi鈥� ni adalah; suatu penambahbaikan kepada sesuatu yang telah ada.
Inovasi bukan sekadar boleh diaplikasi pada sesuatu yang material sahaja, seperti dari sebuah CPU computer yang bapak besar zaman mula-mula komputer direka dulu-dulu kepada sebuah komputer riba yang mudah alih zaman sekarang, bahkan boleh juga digunapakai dalam pengurusan organisasi. Contoh inovasi dalam organisasi ialah; kalau zaman dulu orang buat banci penduduk dengan ketuk-ketuk setiap pintu rumah dan isi borang berkaitan, zaman sekarang kita guna sistem e-census je. Thomas Alva Edison adalah contoh orang yang gila inovasi. Dia terapkan 鈥渒egilaan鈥� inovasi ni dalam syarikat beliau, General Electric.
Proses inovasi telah mencetuskan Revolusi Industri Proses inovasi yang akan digunakan sudah menjadi semakin kompleks. Proses ini telah berkembang daripada aktiviti keusahawanan pada abad ke-18 seperti Josiah Wedgwood, kepada organisasi formal penyelidikan pada abad ke-19 dan jabatan penyelidikan dan pembangunan (R&D) syarikat pada pertengahan dan akhir abad ke-20, hinggalah penglibatan berbilang penyumabng pada hari ini dalam rangkaian innovator yang tersebar dan disokong oleh teknologi baharu.
Bukan semua yang indah je dalam inovasi ni. Peluang untuk gagal tu kadang-kadang lebih cerah berbanding peluang untuk berjaya. Inovasi berisiko kerana innovator perlu mempertimbangkan beberapa perkara antaranya (1) risiko permintaan, (2) risiko perniagaan, (3) risiko teknologi, (4) risiko organisasi, (5) risiko rangkaian, dan (6) risiko konteks. Secara teori, risiko ini sebenarnya boleh diukur dan diurus jika innovator dapat mengambil pengajaran dari kesilapan idea inovasi yang yang terdahulu.
Penggunaan teknologi inovasi membuatkan data kompleks, maklumat, perspektif dan keutamaan dari kumpulan yang berbeza menjadi jelas dan mudah difahami. Antara Negara innovator yang tersohor di rantau Asia adalah Singapura, Korea, Taiwan, China dan Jepun. Malaysia? Kita hebat dalam bidang lain. Contoh paling mudah: Malaysia Negara terbaik dalam mengawal pandemik COVID19. Hah.
I bought this some time ago to give me a basis for a module I have to prepare, and on the first couple of tries I struggled to get very far. Time has now caught up and on finding I had to read it, I really enjoyed it. As would be expected in this series it really is a basic starter for a topic, but it covers pretty much everything you could want. From some of the academic theories, examples of innovators and innovative companies and organisations, to the role of individuals, governments and academia as well as companies in innovating. It covered some of the challenges, and some of the failures. For anyone wanting to understand more about how organisations do and don't innovate, this is a very good starting place.
Innovation as an intrinsic drive to improve is a greatly sought out need of the day. The book is a retrospective briefing on the various ways great entrepreneurs and enterprises have improved their productivity over time. Though the book tries to strike interest in how, as a manageable system, innovation can be used it drags on with the details to make its point. Overall the book is a new take on the why and how innovation can be understood as a propellent of every growth and development that occurs anywhere.
On some places, the book looks more like a TED talk made by some conglomerate overlord - for example, I don't think any employee today would like to eat late dinner at work as some at Edison's company had done, and also "be proud" of it. On the other hand, the book is really insightful and has a lot of great nuggets on how innovation actually happens. So, I have mixed feelings. But it is readable, and interesting.
It surprised me that after working for some time in r and d, that I had only a vague sense of what innovation was. With a lot more to learn than I realised I was also interested from the beginning with the example of Wedgwood, my own involvement in r and d also having been in porcelain and ceramics. However, for a short book it turned out to be a slow read, as I became bogged down in many places. It seems that in trying to condense and generalize, many sections are reduced to motherhood statements. Nevertheless, I did finish and have learnt a lot, and I'll be placing this alongside my Oxford book of English grammar - another small book that taught me much about a subject I was only familiar with informally before reading it.
I suspect there are better books on innovation out there. But is it worth reading them in place of 'doing' innovation? The analysis is far less interesting than being involved so I'm not impressed to read more at this point. (Speaking of which, the remainder of this review is some dot points from the various chapters which are more a reminder to me than a thing else - browse at your own risk). But it achieves its purpose, which is after all, to succinctly summarise some key aspects of the topic.
Wedgwood. What organizations produce (e.g. The physical things); the way they produce, including both internal (processes and practices) and external interfaces (customers and collaborators); the context in which they produce (social, legislative, etc.).
Definitions and disruption. Five views - science 'up', society 'down', lifecycle feedback, lean manufacturing, strategic integration and networking - all based on physical products and potentially now redundant or limited. Theory - evolutionary economics and dynamic capability- essence being that innovation is emergent. Time - early and late; industry germination time; leading, following or prepared.
The way innovation happens. Examples from ibm and Kevlar, followed by description of dynamics such as customer/supplier, collaboration (speed-similarity, novelty-diversity), people (Is and Ts).
The players - the role of business, government (underestimated?), universities (overestimated?) and to what extent hard vs soft factors enable innovation. Thus, MITs focus on problems and arts in its engineering courses. China and Japan, the concern about social cohesion and trust levels in the former, as a threat to ongoing innovative success.
Winding up and the future of innovation. How ibm reset its approach - open software approach and big vision of the computing future.