What True Innovation Looks Like
Large companies are obsessed with fostering innovation, and for good reason. Building a better mousetrap gives you, for a time at least, a leg-up on the competition. But the fact that corporations need to formalise a process for innovating suggests an obvious problem: big companies are inherently stifling of innovative thought and activity.
We know the reasons why: a bias for what has worked in the past, incentives to avoid risky initiatives (big companies love to punish failure during that soul-sapping ritual, the annual appraisal), the deadening effects of groupthink, and the inevitable ennui that sees employees just trying to survive till the next payday.
To find real innovation therefore, you have to go outside established businesses: to university design students, for example.
Min-Kyu Choi just won Britain’s most prestigious design prize with the kind of innovation overpaid corporate drones could only wish they had thought of. He solved an ubiquitous and long-standing problem in an elegantly simple way. The video is worth a thousand words:
Very nice piece of design. For years I’ve wondered whether the UK power plugs really have to be like that, more than twice the size of most other European plugs. I hope regulation will not kill this great idea before it gets to market.
Yes indeed Tobias, the thicket of Health and Safety regulations are another minefield innovators and entrepreneurs have to negotiate in bringing their products to market. This design does seem to have incorporated the standard requirements- earth wire, working fuse, etc, so hopefully it should be a shoo-in.