One of the biggest misconceptions of innovation is that it’s a modern concept. Past discoveries tell us otherwise. For centuries, innovators have built upon standard products and practices to create something new and exciting. Yet, novelty is only one characteristic of successful innovation. The other piece that’s often overlooked is usefulness.
In simpler terms, innovation must be new and useful. It needs to be original but won’t be successful unless people utilize it. Keeping these two characteristics in mind is essential to a design’s success.
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DOWNLOAD NOWWhat Are the Three Types of Innovation?
Innovation in business isn’t limited to products. While there’s no denying Apple’s transformative products have made them an industry giant, it’s important to remember that innovation has several applications. Here are three types of innovation your company can design and implement.
- Product or service innovation: Creating a new product or service or enhancing an existing one, such as the internet or the pivoting head of Gillette razor blades
- Process innovation: Implementing changes to make a process stronger or more efficient, such as assembly lines in manufacturing
- Business model innovation: Transforming business operations like ride-sharing platforms Uber and Lyft did by taking the taxi and car service companies’ business model and altering it to a peer-to-peer, digitized one
Although product innovation is only one type, much can be gleaned from analyzing past product innovations. This requires an understanding of what makes products innovative.
What Makes a Product Innovative?
In business, innovation is an original idea that’s useful to consumers. But what does that mean, and how can you ensure your idea has these two essential ingredients?
One way is by identifying and addressing the pain points your consumers are experiencing. There are two types of pain points innovation should address: explicit and latent.
- Explicit pain points: Customers are aware of and can easily define these pain points.
- Latent pain points: These are more difficult to define because most customers aren’t aware of them.
Innovative ideas focused on users’ challenges have a better chance of success and longevity. Understanding your innovation’s viability can be harder than identifying pain points, but it’s another crucial factor in this process.
Remember, innovations aren’t inherently modern. Netflix’s streaming service is a successful innovative product but grounded in the modern world. Even ancient innovations, such as the creation of language, are examples of how prospective innovators should approach the creative process. Consider this when looking for inspiration and guidance in your innovation process.
9 Innovative Product Examples
Recency bias—limiting your understanding of innovation to modern products and services—can be detrimental to the innovation process. Don’t let a narrowed perspective of what successful innovation is negatively affect your creativity.
Here are nine incredibly successful innovations that have stood the test of time.
1. The Wheel
Invented around 4000 BCE, the wheel is one of the earliest recorded innovations. While it’s often forgotten as an innovative product, it continues to have an impact. Its inventive design addressed a common pain point around moving multiple heavy objects at once. The result was a circular frame that allows users to transport many heavy items in a short time. Its significance is still felt today and has led to additional breakthroughs, such as carriages and today’s more modern transportation methods.
2. The Printing Press
Your favorite book or magazine wouldn’t exist without the printing press. This technological breakthrough was novel and useful in that it allowed for the mass production of written documents. It solved an explicit pain point in document production: time consumption and tediousness. Creating a product that eliminated the handwriting element transformed the publishing world by making the process easier and quicker.
3. The Lightbulb
Although there’s some debate on who invented the lightbulb, no one denies its significance. It’s a great example of an innovative product that solved explicit and latent pain points. Before lightbulbs, products like lanterns and oil lamps produced light but made houses more susceptible to fires. At the time, these accidents were accepted as a necessary risk until innovation showed people otherwise.
4. Automobiles
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk wouldn’t be the business mogul he is today without the initial innovation of motorized automobiles. The automobile’s invention in 1886 kickstarted a technological evolution by focusing on the transportation landscape’s challenges, such as fatigue from walking or bicycling and caring for horses that pulled carriages. Today, horse-drawn carriages are nearly obsolete beyond tourist attractions and services.
5. Computers
Computers have completely changed everyday life. Since their humble beginnings of automating mathematical equations, computers have progressed and evolved according to users’ ever-changing pain points. For example, computers were originally enormous, spanning nearly 50 feet long and weighing almost five tons. Over time, their size and portability have reduced from desktop computers to laptops and smartphones.
6. Cellular Phones
While cellular phones also evolved, they initially solved a specific problem for phone users: landlines weren’t portable. People were tethered to house phones, beepers, and phone booths if they wanted to receive a call. Cellular phones allowed users to take calls from anywhere. As more consumers bought cellular phones, this product solved latent pain points about safety outside the house and emergency contacting.
7. The Internet
The internet is such a widely used product that it’s hard to imagine a world without it. In this way, it may be the most successful modern innovation. It was originally based on the expression “information at your fingertips.” Although limited information was accessible to those with a library card, basic cable, and a newspaper subscription, waiting for information was still inconvenient. The internet solved this latent pain point by becoming a vast hub of instantaneous knowledge and information.
8. Bagless Vacuum Cleaner
Bagless vacuums may seem like an odd addition to this list, but it’s a great example of how simple updates to a product can impact an industry. James Dyson, an industrial designer, was frustrated with the process of emptying his vacuum cleaner bags. They sometimes caused clogs and buildup that affected the vacuum’s performance. With these pain points in mind, he built the first bagless vacuum cleaner. Since then, Dyson has revolutionized cleaning technology and continues to innovate based on its users' key pain points.
9. iPhones
It’s no surprise that Apple products are almost always mentioned in any discussion about innovation. The iPhone is a modern innovation that revolutionized cellular phone technology. While computers and cell phones were constantly evolving, Steve Jobs understood that consumers’ latent need for portability and speed couldn’t be solved with a computer or phone alone. This is what led to the iPhone.
How To Be Innovative in the Modern World
Innovation isn’t just for inventors and entrepreneurs. It isn’t just for the workplace either. In fact, an excellent way to foster innovation as a regular practice is to adopt a design thinking mentality.
Design thinking is a user-centric, solutions-based approach to innovation. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation, Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar touches on design thinking’s principles using the four phases of innovation framework:
- Clarify: Conduct research to clarify a problem and empathize with your target audience. The goal is to identify key pain points, ensuring solutions are useful.
- Ideate: Focus on idea generation to solve problems identified during research.
- Develop: Explore potential solutions generated during ideation. Create prototypes to validate their effectiveness.
- Implement: Advocate for your innovation to key stakeholders and encourage its adoption into the organization.
This approach provides structure to aid your innovation process but doesn’t require rigid adherence. Creative problem-solving methods, like design thinking, aren’t one-size-fits-all. Rather, they’re roadmaps to creating innovative products and services.
How You Can Create an Innovative Product
Classifying products as “innovative” isn’t just applicable to products like an iPhone or electric car, and it doesn’t require teams of experts. Innovation can be accomplished by anyone with an original and useful idea, whether you're an entrepreneur, small business owner, or part of a larger organization. Innovation is achievable with the right approach and mindset.
The design thinking process is a wonderful resource for innovation on any scale. Each stage is conducive to all forms of innovation and can guide you through your new product, service, process, or business model creation.
Eager to learn more about how design thinking can help you innovate? Enroll in our online course Design Thinking and Innovation, which will teach you how to apply the design thinking framework to the innovation process. Are you interested in our other entrepreneurship and innovation courses? Download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.
This post was updated on August 23, 2024. It was originally published on March 23, 2022.
