Innovative Discoveries: Serendipity, Errors, and Exaptation
One does not have to look far to find the innovation
imperative. It jumps out from myriad strategic plans and strategy
documents, each emphasizing the importance of innovation to our customers, shareholders,
business, future, and, most importantly, our survival and growth. Advertising campaigns
for anything from automobiles to mobile phones to luxury automobiles demand
ingenuity. It is buried deep within our annals of history, demonstrating how
far and how long it has affected our lives. Every politician acknowledges that
the process of innovation is continuously shaping and reshaping our lifestyles.
Corporations, nonprofits, and many other types of
organizations of all sizes and forms benefit immensely from creativity. The
argument is straightforward: if an organization does not change and improve
what it gives the world (products and services) and how it generates and offers
them, its chance of being surpassed by those that do. It is all about survival,
and history has shown us that survival is not a need! Those businesses that
endure do so because they can change regularly and
Discussion
Many research studies have been conducted to study the
elements influencing the success of new goods. Most have used a ‘matched-pair’ methodology,
an experimental design in which study scenarios are matched depending on
important variables or common qualities relevant to the investigation's issue.
This allows business managers to distinguish between good and bad practices and
helps to account for other factors. Common factors that affect a product’s
success or failure include:
·
Competitive advantage
·
Market understanding
·
Comprehensive product definition
·
Risk evaluation
·
Product classification
·
Project assets
·
Execution ability
·
Senior leadership and management support
When researchers have questioned managers on how they come
up with their most innovative ideas, they have described processes that range
from cryptic and intuitive to lucky accidents and serendipitous discoveries.
Although specific revolutionary innovations or products, such as anesthesia,
started accidentally, the general rule is that chance favors carefully laid
plans
Serendipity
Like biological evolution, which allows organisms to thrive
in a changing environment, organizational innovation allows for growth and
development. Nevertheless, as knowledge of evolution has grown, the factors
that motivate new ideas have remained unclear. Organizations spend much money
on systematic ways to speed up the creative process. However, research into the
past and personal experience points to the importance of luck and chance. To
reconcile these divergent viewpoints, Fink et al. ( 2017) analyzed the
mathematics of innovation as a hunt for designs throughout a universe of
component building blocks. Data from several fields, including language,
cuisine, and technology, were used to validate our hypotheses. By keeping track
of the number of feasible designs as the researchers add new parts, they have
found that component usefulness can change over time. Unexpected crossovers
give the impression of being the outcome of pure chance. However, Fink et al. (
2017) suggest that an organization can intentionally increase the expansion of
the product space if it knows when crossovers will occur in the first place.
Strategic errors
Errors are a fact of life for any company. While most
mistakes can be easily fixed, some can have severe outcomes if not addressed.
Error prevention is frequently seen as the sole method used by organizations to
address the issue of errors. Frese and Keith
(2015) conclude that error prevention efforts should be complemented by
error management, a method aimed at efficiently addressing problems once they
have happened (examples of the latter are learning and innovations). The
researchers begin by describing mistakes and associated concepts, then survey
the literature on how error management affects various processes involved with
errors (error detection, damage control). The emotional, motivational,
cognitive, and behavioral pathways of the beneficial benefits of error
management on individuals and organizations are then examined. The formation of
a mindset of acceptance of human error is one of the conditions necessary for
learning from mistakes, as is the case with other positive outcomes.
Expactation
One technique of novelty production in invention that has
not gotten much attention is exaptation or the discovery of previously
unrecognized uses for existing artifacts.
Exaptation was first hypothesized in biology as an alternate
evolutionary strategy to adaptation
The frequency of
exaptation in the pharmaceutical business is quantified here. Andriani, Ali, & Mastrogiorgio's (2017)
research shows that around 42% of the novel activities discovered in current
medications are exaptive in nature. Andriani,
Ali, & Mastrogiorgio (2017) establish a connection between
exaptation and radical innovation and discover that the vast majority of
radical inventions in our sample are exaptive. Furthermore, most game-changing
developments occur in unrelated markets to the drug's initial one. The
researchers argue that exaptive creativity is distinct from purposeful and
accidental innovation in terms of its search mechanism and approach to
addressing problems.
As the COVID‐19 pandemic spread across the globe in the first quarter of 2020, demand for specialized equipment in hospitals soared. As a result, firms from various sectors repurposed their design and manufacturing to create new products in days. By examining 80 cases of this accelerated innovation, the work of Liu, Beltagui, & Ye (2021) investigates how a shared purpose drives change in the innovation process. It applies the lens of exaptation – the discovery of unintended functions for technologies – to explain how product complexity and ecosystem structure affect accelerated innovation in this context. The research extends the application of exaptation to manufacturing and product design; it identifies a relationship between complexity, exaptation, and ecosystems. The research suggests that the ability to exapt design and manufacturing can determine a firm's ecosystem role. These results lead to implications for theory and practice during the response to and recovery from the crisis.
Conclusion
The need to innovate is readily apparent. It is glaringly evident in the plethora of plans and documents that emphasize the significance of innovation to our clients, investors, company, future, and, most importantly, our continued existence and development. Researchers asking managers how they get their most novel ideas have heard everything from cryptic, intuitive leaps to a series of fortuitous, accidental findings. Organizational innovation permits expansion and development, like biological evolution permits organisms to adapt to a shifting environment. Like many other good results, learning from mistakes requires the development of a mindset that accepts the possibility of human imperfection. Exaptation, or the finding of new uses for existing artifacts, is a strategy of novelty production in invention that has received little attention. Creativity, which is mainly driven by chance, learning from strategic blunders, and expectation, is of great value to businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations of all kinds and shapes.
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InterFocus. (2021, December 14). Some of the
greatest scientific breakthroughs have been accidentally discovered from within
a laboratory. My New Lab Website:
https://www.mynewlab.com/blog/accidental-scientific-discoveries-and-breakthroughs/
Liu, W., Beltagui, A., & Ye, S. (2021).
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