A special thanks to friend and Innovation Edge colleague Soren Kaplan for sharing his thoughts today on new directions in innovation. Be sure to check out his links. –Cheryl

Innovating Innovation

By Soren Kaplan, guest blogger

Despite the 122,000,000 hits you’ll get from a Google search on “innovation,” the field is relatively fresh. No one has “the answer” and no company has really gotten it “right.” If they did, we’d all just emulate the model and that would be that.

As the world changes, so does the field of innovation. It used to be that products and processes consumed the vast majority of the innovation air-time within most companies. Today, we’re seeing four directions that are starting to yield strategic fruit for the early innovation adopters:

Open Innovation – UC Berkeley professor Henry Chesbrough coined this term, and has recently extended the concept to include open business models . In today’s networked global economy, firms that embrace the principles of open innovation will clearly have a leg up on those that believe all the smart people work inside their corporate campus. Whereas the old model of R&D-focused innovation assumed that new ideas, technologies, products and services needed to be developed in-house, open innovation turns this assumption on its head.

Design Innovation – You know that industrial design has found its place when Fortune 500 companies like Samsung, Ford, HP, P&G and others instill Chief Creative Officers and Chief Design Officers to lead their innovation efforts. Business schools like Stanford have created design programs. And this year’s Davos gathering featured a special workshop series on the topic. Whereas “design” used to be equivalent with “industrial design”, its scope has expanded to include “experience design” which can include anything from designing user interfaces to defining service and support offerings to orchestrating value-added experiences that surprise and delight customers.

“You” Innovation – When Time Magazine named “you” as the Person of the Year, we all achieved our 15 minutes of fame together. And that’s what it’s all about – collective innovation. From Flickr to YouTube, we’ve seen the role of social networking and user-generated content in value creation. Companies that find ways to harness word-of-mouth marketing, social networks, and “you” will create new forms of value in our networked economy. (OK, maybe THEY’RE not creating it, but at least they’re benefiting from it!)

Socially Responsible Innovation – With global warming, the looming healthcare crisis, rampant childhood obesity, and other social ills, we’ve finally seen the light—or at least the glimmer of a candle. Business should be able to make money while at the same time providing a broader benefit to people, the community and the environment. Wal-Mart is pushing it. Business schools are teaching it.

Business ventures and social responsibility are not paradoxical and don’t have to be at odds. In fact, finding ways to creatively integrate the two can create compelling strategic differentiation in the market. Just ask Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, the Body Shop, and especially Interface. Given that scientists just discovered a substantial breakaway crack in the perennial sea ice of the North Pole, we’re sure to see more socially-responsible innovation in the future.

Just like the world, innovation is complex. While new products, services and technologies are always important, the field of innovation is about much more. Sustained value creation relies on innovating how we innovate. That’s what real innovation is all about.