How do I know if I'm working on an innovative solution?
To know if we are innovating we must first try to define innovation. I will share with you a series of thoughts that as the CEO of Soluciones Kenko have accumulated to form my own understanding of innovation.
It is said, strictly, that ideas can only be innovative after they are implemented as new products, services, or procedures that really find a successful application, imposing themselves on the market through diffusion.
Sounds better doesn't it? Let's see the strict version of our mission in kenko:
"Transform ideas into products, services, or procedures that really find a successful application, imposing themselves in the market through diffusion in order to improve and save lives."
I personally believe that innovating is multiplying a primary value exchange unit or creating a derivative so that all individuals can satisfy their needs. There are three primary values that satisfy the needs of an individual or a complete market: Time, Matter and the ability to transmit information through time based on previous experiences and experiments that for practical purposes we will call knowledge.
In order for an individual to be able to feed himself (satisfy one of his needs) he currently exchanges money for food. It is a simple transaction of one primary value unit and a derivative value. In order for this person to have the money to buy his food, he exchanges his time for money from a company. This corporation could perhaps dedicate itself to create digital spaces, transporting food from one region to another, investing in companies, building housing or creating new medical devices.
Without a doubt the greatest innovation was to create a bargaining unit. The barter of goods and services supports the society value transactions for a long time, but adding the feeling of security and collective belief the innovation of banking was created, an example of a derivative value. Later another innovation will arrive through the credit system, it will manage to multiply the derived value in order to create a more abundant transaction of value between individuals.
It is essential to understand that money has been a fundamental innovation in the exchange of value, as a means of, not an end in itself.
Now let's look at a very obvious example of innovation in recent times, the transition between blockbuster and netflix. The market needs to be entertained, physically it exchanges its money for a physical product that it reproduces at home, however, thanks to the value derived from information technologies, a digital channel has been completed to satisfy the needs of the market.
Derived value: It is the result of combining at least two primary values to guarantee the needs of an individual or a group.
At Kenko we believe that true disruptive innovation can only be achieved by creating a derived value at the right time and place, so that the market can exchange value for it, or in the multiplication of a primary value for the market.
Let's say that currently, it takes about 20 minutes of preparation to know the state of a patient's heart. If a set of technologies and services allows reducing patient preparation to 1 minute, an innovative solution could be considered. But there is one last step to be done before claiming victory. Am I actually multiplying the main value? Of course, I do make time more efficient for that segment of people who work doing heart studies to connect 20 instead of 1. The problem is that they are willing to make a value exchange, if the price of reducing those 20 minutes to 1 is priceless is because the alternatives of options that the market has are more optimal in terms of value exchange. Worse still, there are not enough patients for this level of optimization. This makes it totally out as an innovative solution.
Let's look at another example: the management of information technology reached the point of generating BIG DATA on practically everything that surrounds us. This BIG DATA became an innovation when this form of knowledge was exchanged for a derivative such as Money and thus multiplying a value.
Image 1. Value exchange diagram with its primary and derivative values enveloping the market. Time, the percentage of life used by an individual or a group to perform an action in exchange for another pure value; Space / Matter, natural resources available to a group of individuals; Knowledge, the ability of the human being to understand through reason the nature, qualities and relationships of things.
As we see in the diagram, the triangle of primary values is perfectly represented and each combination of primary values or multiplication of them creates a whole new concept of development. Industry, for example, is a scheme where, through a service or work, groups of people generate or produce goods that satisfy the needs of the market. As such, the creation of an industry is considered a total innovation.
Once this is understood, it seems easier to identify if I am doing an innovation or not.
Is my idea easily identifiable in the value exchange scheme?
Is my intention to create a derivative or multiply or optimize an existing one?
Is my proposal compared to the alternatives something that generates more value to the market?
Is the market willing to pay for my solution?
Without a doubt, all the technology and design processes that we do at Kenko Solutions go through this analysis process to know exactly the needs of the target users for whom we are developing the technology and thus be able to do real innovation with the resources we have.
I invite you to detect those market needs and together, with the development needs and technologies at kenko, we can create true innovation.
