Data-Driven Innovation

chapter 2Human behavior

Dealing with innovation and the unknown

Innovation involves the creation and adoption of something new from which value can be appropriated. It might refer to new products, new features, or new ways of doing things. Innovation often creates unexpected outcomes, as it does not rely on rational and foreseeable decision-making. Instead, innovation involves the unthinkable—something believed to be beyond human imagination. Innovation identifies and harnesses the unknown and the unknown unknowns in the human mind. In contrast, common thinking is based on the known world. In common thinking, we recognize and deal with what we can see and comprehend as human beings, while innovation emerges in human blind spots. Innovation ...