FAQ on the topic of innovation

Innovations are important for companies to be able to survive in competition. Studies show that innovations increase the return on investment, turnover, the number of employees and the productivity of companies. Innovative products achieve higher market prices and innovative processes lead to greater efficiency. Without innovation and a willingness to change, companies can miss important developments and be overtaken by competitors.

For example, when Apple presented the first iPhone to the world public in 2007, Nokia was the market leader in mobile phones. Ten years later, Nokia had to sell its mobile phone division to Microsoft. Nokia had not seen the triumph of smartphones with touch screens coming.

Innovations are successful when they solve relevant problems and offer added value. Customer problems are innovation potentials. The key to successful innovation is to engage with the customer. For example, customers should be visited regularly or observed using the product. Companies should allow problems, collect current and possible future problems and work on them. It is clear that solving the problems takes time, but early feedback from the customers is essential in order to avoid missing the need for development.

Innovation takes place everywhere. On the one hand, there are entrepreneurs who have a good idea - for example Hermann Hölscher and Gottfried Windmöller, who founded the paper goods factory Windmöller & Hölscher in Lengerich together in 1869. At first, the company produced paper bags by hand for packaging goods for merchants and folding capsules for packaging medicines for pharmacists. To replace the laborious manual work, Hermann Hölscher developed a "pointed bag machine" and applied for a patent for it in 1877. Today, Windmöller & Hölscher is a successful internationally active mechanical engineering company with about 2,500 employees worldwide and specialises in the production of machines for the manufacture of flexible packaging.

On the other hand, many innovations are user-driven. Frank Brormann, master hairdresser and owner of 360° Haare GmbH in Oelde, invented a cutting tool that cuts hair at an angle instead of straight. This makes it more elastic, gives it more body and reduces split ends. The cutting tool was therefore not invented by a scissors manufacturer, but by a hairdresser. For his development, Frank Brormann received the Münsterland Innovation Award in the category "Small and Smart" in 2019.

The term disruption goes back to the American professor Clayton M. Christensen, who published the book "The Innovator's Dilemma" in 1997. Evolutionary technologies improve products for the core clientele, i.e. the products are improved step by step. Disruptive technologies, on the other hand, create new products for markets that have yet to be invented. Companies with disruptive innovation operate from a market niche and serve customers that are not interesting for established companies. Over time, the quality of the new products increases and they are bought by more and more customers. The established companies thus get serious competition.

A good example of a disruptive innovation is Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia on the internet, which started as a non-profit project with voluntary authors in 2001. In contrast, there were the traditional printed encyclopaedias with paid authors, such as Brockhaus, whose 30-volume 21st edition was sold in 2006 at a total price of 2,820 euros and weighed a combined 70 kilograms. In the end, the printed encyclopaedias could no longer compete with the free Wikipedia offering, which could quickly absorb new topics and continuously update existing ones. The Brockhaus Encyclopaedia no longer exists today.

Design thinking aims to solve complex problems, develop new ideas and put the customer or user at the centre of all considerations. Design thinking is therefore more an approach to solving complex problems and developing new ideas than an innovation method.

Prerequisites for efficient problem solving with Design Thinking are:

• multidisciplinary teams (disciplines, age, experience, etc.)
• working in spaces that promote creativity
• the joint development of a problem
• knowledge of the needs and motivation of clients and
• the design of concepts that are tested, adapted and changed several times.

Design thinking can best be translated as "thinking like an inventor". There are six steps in design thinking that are repeated throughout the process:

• Understanding: Understanding the problem, choosing an appropriate question with regard to the needs and challenges of the project.
• Observation: intensive research and field observation of the user, gaining essential insights, delineating the framework conditions
• Synthesis/Determining point of view: Breaking down the observations made to a single, prototypical user, defining the user's needs.
• Idea generation: developing and visualising ideas
• Prototyping: creating simple prototypes to illustrate the ideas, testing on the target group
• Refinement: learning on the basis of the test on the target group, refinement of the prototype until an optimal, user-centred product has been created (this step can concern all previous steps)

Within these six steps, a wide variety of methods can be applied, such as the use of different creativity techniques to find ideas or Lego bricks to build simple prototypes.