Monday Morning Mojo

Innovation is Intentional

Innovation is the ongoing, intentional exploitation of circumstance to generate more and greater value.

Innovation is intentional. What I am talking about here is not an accident. It is sought after. Sure there are the great stories of how mistakes turned into great profits, like when Will Kellogg took some stale wheat in 1894 and tried to turn it into dough but got flakes instead.

But, that mistake was not the innovation. The innovation took place twelve years later when after much experimentation he decided to mass market the flakes and started the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company.

And it didn’t stop there. Years later when cereal had bottomed out as a children’s food, the Kellogg Company convinced adult America that cereal was nutritional and easy to eat, moving it from a $3.7 billion industry in 1983 to a $5.4 billion in 1988.

These moves did not happen by accident. They came as a result of an intense desire to succeed in the marketplace, opening up new frontiers for the food industry.

Innovation done well is exploitation. It makes full use of breakthroughs, deriving benefits that include enhanced productivity, improved efficiencies, greater profits, increased market share, and above all exceptional growth in value... and it happens on purpose.

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