The ability to innovate is not a skill limited to an elite few -- it is something everyone can learn to do, entrepreneur and executive Curtis Carlson told a Princeton audience Feb. 13.February 14, 2008 by Hilary Parker (permalink)
The ability to innovate is not a skill limited to an elite few -- it is something everyone can learn to do, entrepreneur and executive Curtis Carlson told a Princeton audience Feb. 13.
More important, it is something more people must do if our society is to prosper and become sustainable, said Carlson, who is president and chief executive of SRI, an independent, non-profit research institute.
"The good news is that we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity," he said, speaking not of material things, but human ability. "There are no limits to ideas and creativity in the knowledge age."
Carlson's talk, "The Journey from Invention to Innovation," was the first of two events in this year's Princeton-Jumpstart Lecture Series on Technology Entrepreneurship.
Innovation can come in many forms, he said, from the classic disposable razor blade to a revolutionary approach for the manufacturing and distribution of computers. It is not limited to the technical disciplines or the corporate realm and can come from artists and nurses, or chefs and professors, he added.
"Innovation is the creation and delivery of new customer value in the marketplace," he explained. "An invention is not innovation. Creativity is not innovation. Clever ideas are not innovation. Until someone uses the idea, it's just another interesting idea."
Before assuming his current position at SRI Carlson spent more than two decades with Sarnoff Corporation, a wholly owned SRI subsidiary. During his time as head of ventures and licensing at Sarnoff, he helped start more than ten companies. The achievements of two teams he started and led at Sarnoff garnered Emmy Awards for the company for the creation of high-definition television and a system that measures broadcast image quality.
Carlson, the co-author of "Innovation: The Five Discipline for Creating What Customers Want," called for a dramatic change in the U.S. approach to innovation if the country is to remain competitive with the rest of the world.
For example, he said, the government must recognize that most vibrant part of the American economy is in the small companies, which are often subjected to bureaucracy and barriers that limit their success.
Additionally, he said corporations must create and institutionalize innovation systems. While some companies do have such processes in place, including Toyota, it is not often found in today's corporate climate.
"It is a rare, rare company that has a thoughtful innovation process," Carlson said.
Similarly, Carlson described a "brutal educational reality" in which U.S. students are not being taught what they need to know about innovation. Instead, people are often taught to believe that innovation is all about creativity and risk-taking, which Carlson said is simply wrong.
"Entrepreneurs aren't risk-takers, they're risk-mitigators," he said.
For the country to succeed, Carlson said there is a need for a systematic practice of innovation that is focused on customer value. The goal is to create organizations that become better and better at creating value by addressing unmet customer needs.
"Innovation must become a discipline, a science and an art that can be taught, applied and improved," he said.