Being more innovative about innovation?

About 15 years ago I did a survey on innovation.  Like a lot of surveys on innovation it re-uncovered the obvious.  We all think innovation is a good idea, wish we did more of it, and don't know how to institutionalise it without killing it.  Yawn.

But, we also highlighted that in Britain we have a peculiar view of innovation.  We tend to think of it as being:

• technology-based
• revolutionary not evolutionary
• expensive
• large scale.

Conversely, other geographies (and at that time Japan in particular) think of innovation as being probably not technology-based; evolutionary / incremental; potentially low cost; and often small scale.

I wondered last week if this was one of the factors behind a recent ITPRO report that non-IT execs value IT but don't see it as a source of innovation.  Rather than just concluding as the report does that this means the IT function still lacks strategic clout (sigh), it could mean that either non-IT execs, CIOs, or both are looking for innovation in the wrong place - in technology alone.  

I remember, as we did seminars about this research, one VC participant talking about how what he especially looked for was businesses that took an idea proven in one domain, and applied it to a new one.  Sounds innovative to me.  But, note, not a new idea per se in sight - just a new context.

So, how about we all try this for a few months: 

• stop looking for new ideas, technologies, etc
  
• start looking for new contexts in which we can apply ideas already shown to work

Might even align with cost conscious times?