Innovation = creativity * implementation

"Innovation is not creativity" - A statement made by Vijay Govindarajan, in one of the recent HBR blog. He has tried to quantify things in terms of a simple formula, which says an organization's capacity to innovate is the product of creativity and execution.

Just as I read this article, I came across an update on Google wave.  This was an update saying that it is withdrawing the Google wave product, by this year-end. When Google wave was first introduced, it literally waved across the user community, but it failed to increase the user-adoption. Does that mean, it was not user friendly - Not at all, it was infact very impressive. Then what failed ..??

One reason which I can recognize, for this failure is lack of a great business model. It just re-instated the perspective, that innovation is not just creativity, but also a strong implementation strategy (or a sustainable business model). One cant expect a mediocre business model to propagate a great product. If you give say 9 points (out of 10) to Google wave product per se, and there exists no business model to sell the product, implementation gets 0 points, the multiplication (9 x 0) of which gives 0. So net innovative quotient of that product is zero, even though it was a creative one. If the business model even propagates by 1 point, the overall score increases by 9. This is the splendor of a great business model.

As I skimmed through the humble submission of Google, my fascination for that company actually increased. We say that people don’t learn from their mistakes, how about organizations like Google?  This is the not the first product failure which the company has faced (some of the previous failures being Dodgeball, Jaiku, etc..  apologies for my bad memory), but still it thrives, and continue to be creative and (sometimes) innovative.  Google chandelled with a innovative search engine concept, and has leveraged that growth in expanding into various products.  But Google has never repudiated any legitimate failures, rather has accepted  them graciously and got motivation from each of the them, to succeed. I remember people saying, learn from your failures - and not every person can do so, only great persons can do so. It takes a lot of courage to accept your mistake and get motivation from the same.

Isn't it amazing to find out how organization and humans are analogous? Any maxim applied on humans almost applies to organizations. One great man said - "If you never failed; you never lived" , I bet Google would be the present Google, had it not failed.