What is an innovation?

Reinventing myself

In my world, populated only by me, I got this new idea to redirect my career towards creating and managing innovative services in the area of the industries I previously have worked in. In short, I will reinvent my work-self, so this is truly an innovation. Wow! What a great start at the open course “Managing Service Innovation” that started this Friday at the Karlstad University, Sweden, centre for Service Research.

One of the first lessons at the kick-off meeting was that the term “innovation” actually is quite complex, and needs to be specified in order to be useful. For example “incremental innovation” indicates a step by step fashion that makes use of earlier knowledge and processes, as opposed to “radical innovation” that makes a fresh start.

And, of course, I’m not the only one reinventing myself. It’s not that innovative, I confess. But – it still is quite a good idea and this turn in my work life will serve my work-self well in the future.

So who am I? 

Sticking to my work-self, I started off in the 80’s with a Master of Science (in Engineering), working with opto-electronic component development and the ever expanding business of developing software. After a decade, I found myself also working with the work-processes and quality aspects connected to my software. In other words, I focused more on HOW my customers used my systems, rather than WHAT the system was doing.

After another decade, I got my Master of Education (for the Upper Secondary School), practiced as a teacher (for a handful of years), and then went on being a Quality Manager (for another handful of years). At this point, I had changed my focus again, towards WHY my customers need the software and processes, what they actually need and how to give them just that. Why THAT is important, I will not explain.

My favourite TED Talk

This “why – how – what” terms comes from one of my favourite TED talks, Simon Sinek’s talk “golden circle” and his book “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” (2009).

As you now realise, I have lived my work life backwards to this day. But it’s never too late to learn, and this is why I’m here.

My private self...

...is that of a typical Swede: nature-lower, home and family comes first, book-reading and just loves mathematics. Well, the last one was NOT typically Swedish. I’ve got a few more aces up my sleeve, and will reveal them in later blogposts. Be patient and follow…

This blog will trace the lessons of life I will make, on the path presented above.