A Quote by Theodore Levitt
Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.
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The trouble with much of the advice business gets today about the need to be more vigorously creative is that its advocates often fail to distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things... The shortage is of innovators.
New products, new markets, new investors, and new ways of doing things are the lifeblood of growth. And while each innovation carries potential risk, businesses that don't innovate will eventually diminish.
Innovation is a subset of creativity. Innovation often deals with product launches and is often relegated to the C-suite or to heads of R&D departments. Innovation requires creativity, but creativity is something that is much more broad. It applies to people at all levels of an organization. Today, we all are responsible for delivering "everyday creativity". Small creative acts that add up to big things.
To be born again is, as it were, to enter upon a new existence, to have a new mind, a new heart, new views, new principles, new tastes, new affections, new likings, new dislikings, new fears, new joys, new sorrows, new love to things once hated, new hatred to things once loved, new thoughts of God, and ourselves, and the world, and the life to come, and salvation.
Creativity gives new forms, new patterns, new ideas, new art forms. And we don't know where creativity comes from. Is it inspired from above? Welling up from below? Picked up from the air? What? Creativity is a mystery wherever you encounter it.
In spite of the extraordinary outpouring of totally and partially new products and new ways of doing things that we are witnessing today, by far the greatest flow of newness is not innovation at all. Rather, it is imitation.
Trust the young people; trust this generation's innovation. They're making things, changing innovation every day. And all the consumers are the same: they want new things, they want cheap things, they want good things, they want unique things. If we can create these kind of things for consumers, they will come.
In order to grow we must be open to new ideas...new ways of doing things... new ways of thinking.
The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things.
There are two sure ways to fail: never get started and quit before you succeed. Many companies promote the language of risk-taking and innovation but are so concerned with short term profit goals that their culture discourages innovation (trying new things) and abandons promising projects too soon. It shouldn't require exceptional moral courage to try new things and stick with them.
For better or worse, that is true with any new innovation, certainly any new technological innovation. There's many good things that come out of it, but also some bad things. All you can do is try to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff.
One of the things that slightly annoys me in business is that we use words like innovation. Young people often think innovation is about doing something new, but actually it's not. It's about doing something better than your competition.
Overcomers have a 'finishing' anointing. They don't merely start things. They keep on moving forward until they complete the task. Many people love to start new things. They like to be creative. They enjoy thinking of new projects and dreaming about new adventures. Often, these people actually start some of the new things they are planning for the future. The problem is that they seldom finish what they start.
The more new thinking I did, the more successful it seemed to me that I could become. When magazines are really working, and when websites are really working, they're doing new things all the time, and discovering new writers to do stories, different ways to package stories. I was always very aware that I was very lucky to be doing what I was doing, because I would get up in the morning, and go to work, and the days would fly by.
We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Cultivating innovative thinking starts at the top. Leaders can foster a culture of innovation by encouraging creativity and experimenting with new ideas.
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