How to Breed an Innovative Business Idea — #4 of 31 Proven Skills [Research]

Skill #4: Install ‘Small Effort — Big Result’ as the Litmus Test for Innovating

To harness the ability to innovate, you must cut through the beguiling appeal that innovation promises. Settle on an understanding that is of practical use. Knowing with unmistakable clarity what the end game is — small effort : big result — is a realistic guideline to adopt. Recognizing that you already intentionally innovate in this way through the language you use gets you well on the road

It is arguable that the words “innovation” and its descriptor “innovative” have been among the most appealing terms in business use over the past 50 years or so. The notion of innovativeness seems to conjure up everything that a business desires to be in the eyes of its stakeholders — particularly its customers — and therefore claims of being actively engaged in innovation or of being innovative are understandably legion. While this situation may be broadly appealing, practically it is useless for guiding intentional innovating.

It is axiomatic that if we cannot embrace a clear definition of what we want innovation to be, it will be impossible to achieve any precision in our attempts to innovate. One of the most famous minds in history, Albert Einstein, is credited with saying:

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

It follows logically that if you don’t understand something well, you will struggle to do anything worthwhile with it.

For our purposes, we are not concerned with a definition that is intellectually accurate. Rather, one that is practically usable. Often the main reason we exclaim “What a great idea!” is due to the fact that something surprisingly favorable has happened, way out of proportion to what could’ve been expected from the circumstances in play. It is unexpected, sort of magical, and beneficial in a very satisfying way.

Research I have undertaken into literally thousands of innovative business ideas confirms that this unexpected value characteristic — surprise value popping up — is nearly always present. It suggests a self-evident test for the existence of innovation: that the value generated by innovating must surprisingly exceed the effort employed to create that value. An innovative value gap is created making the effort to value ratio inherently appealing. My research identifies 31 distinct ways to release that innovative value.

Innovative ideas that pass this test can be referred to as Sebirs. Sebir — (pronounced ‘see-bur) — is a loose acronym derived from the phrase: small effort: big result and represents an initiative where a relatively small amount of effort has generated a disproportionately big result.

Foundational Examples of Sebir Value*

In spite of their distinctive, surprise-value characteristic, Sebirs are not rare. Nor are they difficult to initiate. In fact, we commonly innovate intuitively when engaged in the most basic of pastimes –communicating with each other.

Perhaps the simplest example of a Sebir is a pun. The speaker or writer so exploits a word or a phrase that, in addition to its usual meaning, it conveys an additional meaning as well — without the use of any extra words. Same effort; double the result.

Take the expression “Jokes about German sausage are the wurst”, which uses the well-known technique of employing a pun. Additional meaning is extracted from the single word “wurst”. A really pertinent one: “I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.” Or the expression “My grandpa has the heart of a lion and a lifetime ban from the zoo.” This statement is an example of a paraprosdokian, which is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising in a way that causes the reader or listener to reinterpret the first part. Again, multiplied value from the words used.

Perhaps the most famous literary example of extracting maximum value from the minimum number of words is a six-word short story generally attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” This ability to hint at or imply a larger story is innovative in the way that it releases additional meaning.

Many innovative ideas do something analogous to this creative use of language. Additional value is extracted from some resource with relatively little effort due to an innovative insight that has been acquired. Naturally enough, innovating by means of language is prevalent in the business communications, whether it is a retailer advertising wallpaper via “Avoid ugly scenes in the bedroom” or giving your new accounting services startup a name and tagline that promises more than the actual words used: “Abacus: You can count on us.” And going by the brand moniker, “Fcuk”, the fashion chain French Connection UK obviously gets it.

However, perhaps the outstanding, spectacular example of personal innovating involving language in contemporary times is the story of how the name of one of the most ubiquitous social media sites in the world — Twitter — came about.

In 2006, an American software developer Noah Glass was trying to think of a name for an embryonic, online social network. One day, his vibrating phone prompted him to think of the impulses that cause a brain muscle to twitch. He was attracted to the word ‘twitch’, which he chased down in a dictionary, persistently inspecting all of the words coexisting with it. Starting with a potential word, he eventually settled on an original, comparable term: Twitter from ‘twitch’.

Takeaway

*Thousands of curated business ideas can be found at Sebir.com