The Language of Innovation?

Innovation = Communication

Most innovation comes from combining an idea from one field with a perceived need from another field. Does this implicetely mean that without "good" communication between people in these different field innovation is impossible?

This has an impact on the innovation-power of a team of specialist. The better the communication between team-members and understanding of the others' jargon the higher the innovation power of the team.

This does seem to imply there are some prerequisites for innovation in general:

1. The idea (or invention) from one field has to be communicatable to others. Example, a scientist who has an invention lying on the shelf might not be able to explain the invention to anyone but his peers. This means innovation only becomes possible once someone in that field "crosses over".
2. A team needs to communicate between team-members to innovate. If all communication that is needed runs through the teamleader, innovation only happens if the teamleader alone can understand all data needed for the innovation.
3. Communication and language (or jargon) is a key ingredient to innovation.

So all these inventions lying on shelves waiting for an innovation, need communication from either the inventor or someone who can understand both fields.

Have fun.

Comments

[Nicoline Braat]

In my opinion, there are mostly two communication pittfals why some good inventions are not adopted by another party:

1. Failure to explain in simple enough terms what the invention is

2. Failure to remove doubts felt by the other party

I know for one, it is very hard to explain in simple terms a pilot that you have been working on in detail and that you are extremely proud of. You tend to focus on all the cool details you really want to share, rather than on what the audience is interested to hear (mainly, what´s in it for them).

And then of course there is that painful subject.. the possible disadvantages of your work. No one really likes to talk about that. It makes you feel rather exposed.

[Jeroen van Hoof]

Yes, however sometimes the mistake is made that everything can be explained in simple enough terms.

In IT this might be possible. But some of the inventions that I have seen mentioned that have become real breakthroughs (outside of IT) have been in fields that can only be explained to peers in the field.

Especially the ones to do with physics and chemistry inventions. Have you ever tried to explain your bleading edge physics experiment or theory to someone who studied economics or business? I guess not :-)

I have been part of a physics/physics innovation in the past ... which happened just by chance. I had been in for an interview with someone and had explained my bleading edge new stuff on the blackboard. The next day someone else was in that office, saw the stuff on the blackboard and asked "What's that?" ... and a new way to calculate conductance through magnetic multilayers was born .... leading to some nice work on GMR.

What is this GMR thing I hear you asking? ... Giant Magneto Resistance ... without which your laptop would still weigh about 5 kilos and have a harddrive capacity of 512 Mb :-)

Have fun.

Jeroen (who used to be a confused scientist before joining the innovative world of IT)

[Philippe Borremans]

Mmm... and then to say that Public Relations people are 200% convinced that you can explain anything in about 30 second so that anyone would understand you...

But let's be honest, we, in IT, could all do a better job with regards to communications no ?

[Jeroen van Hoof]

Calvin:

"As far as I am concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"

From "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson.

In marketing-speak you could probably explain a lot in 30 seconds ..... not that you could use the "knowledge" gained to innovate though :-)

[Term Papers]

Thanks for pulling this together and sharing!