What is Innovation and why is it important? Gary Hamel, widely acclaimed as one of the world’s leading experts in this field, and according to Economist magazine  is “the world’s reigning strategy guru … says (and I agree)…

"that the biggest challenge facing organizations today is finding a way to build companies where innovation is both radical and systematic”.  

If you don’t agree that it is the most important issue facing organizations today then I ask you to agree that it is at least one of the most important issues

The challenge of systematic, radical innovation leads to two fundamental questions:

–How do you generate breakthrough ideas?

–How do you manage that process? 

So…where does innovation come from…? We are not hard-wired innovative, it is not something we are born with…simply put…distilled to its simplest form…innovation comes from looking at things from a different perspective, looking at things through a different lens. Alan Kay got it right when he said that “perspective is worth 80 IQ points!”

So…if you agree, as all experts on innovation do, that innovation comes from perspective change then take a look at the following DEFINITION of adventure (Jeff Salz) …

”any intentional experience  that substantially alters your perspective long enough to see things you have never before seen and to see familiar things in ways you have never before seen them”.

 So…if Radical Innovation is one of the most important issues facing organizations today and innovation comes from perspective change and the definition of adventure is perspective change then it can be concluded that:

Adventure = Perspective Change = Innovation