Innovation is the holy grail of just about every business in the world. Being the one to introduce a new, popular, convenient, and effective process, service, or product is what all ambitious firms seek to achieve. Yet, many think of innovation as a process of inventing something entirely new. As was aptly stated by Mark Twain, however, “There is no such thing as a new idea.” Even so, this is the general line of thinking.
It’s not just in the realms of creating a new product, either. In the world of entertainment, tech is being leveraged to enable what would have previously been next-to-impossible or even just outright unpopular creations. Of course, this looks like a natural progression from hit entertainment mediums like music and film regularly toying with genre mash-ups. Yet, with the right tech in play, whole new types of entertainment become viable.
Across a few modern tech fads, we can see that innovation at its best is, more or less, the art of combination.
Innovating in the Entertainment Sector
The entertainment sector has long been a great place to explore creative and innovative ideas and put out tech that taps into this. For a mass audience, tech creators can tailor the offering to entertainment-seekers and then build on it. One of the biggest trends of the last decade has been the rise of streaming, with Netflix’s binge-watch model in particular proving popular.
Netflix’s exclusion of advertisements and the flow of episode after episode of TV made this possible, and in doing so, gave rise to a brand new form of viewing informative shows. Documentaries used to think they had to be tight to keep viewers from switching channels. With the Netflix model, docu-series, people are staying tuned for one documentary over several hours, blending serialisation with a documentary approach thanks to the viewing model.
Accessibility, convenience, and the lack of boundaries in the digital space have greatly allowed for entertainment businesses to test new innovations and see if they land with wide audiences in a more cost-effective way. This helped to create the newest additions to the collection of bingo slots online. Slingo games are an amalgamation of slot games and bingo, and landed so well that they’re now their own category that’s innovated in a storied sector.
It’s because of innovations like these within the digital realm that the World Economic Forum sees the progress of innovation in technology being increasingly centred on combinations of existing tech to create something new that’s more convenient or effective in several sectors. The 3C Framework, as the WEF calls it, muses that first, two technologies of complementary capabilities combine to form a new piece of tech that can either create a new solution or outright solve a problem.
Next, the 3C Framework says that this new combined tech solution will lead to the convergence of value chains. What this means is that the tech will lead to a merging of value chains because it can offer new overlapping capabilities. Finally, the compound benefits of this newly-created technology emerge. This is where the ultimate level of impact will be seen, with the tech being applied at different levels to reveal all of the ways that it can benefit its users.
Straightforward Combinations that Revolutionise
There’s only one place to start of a tech innovation that’s revolutionised just about everything. The smartphone took the premise of being a mobile phone combined with the power of a media player and a small computer. Of course, iPhone really kicked it into gear when it leveraged touch-screen technology for the devices. From there, they combined all sorts of functions, like an eReader, the ability to video chat, and more.
The iPhone is, quite possibly, the ultimate example of innovation from combination in the modern era of technology. From there, wearable technologies took more and more of a leap forward. Seeing the acceptance of small screens, along came smart watches, combining the usability of smartphones with the convenience of watching while also tapping into fitness devices that take body readings. Of course, tech innovations through combinations don’t have to be as world-changing as the iPhone.
Many in the past have had a more subtle, but impactful, landing. The humble radio clock, for example. Giving a bedside table or a unit in the kitchen a bit more space, the creation simply bundled two fairly light functions into the same packaging that ended up being around the same size, or smaller, than either a clock or a radio on their own. While smartphones have taken over these uses, if someone is to buy a bedside clock, you can bet that it’ll have radio or music functionality included.
So, if your business or your team is brainstorming away, trying to come up with that next great innovation, look to what’s popular and useful, and turn to combining them in a productive way. It’s not about reinventing the wheel: it’s more about combining what works to form a better wheel.
Be the first to comment