Sources of Innovation

From a class I'm sitting in on at my MBA at the BI, here are some interesting suggestions on sources of innovation for consideration:

• Unexpected occurrences

• Incongruities

• Process needs

• Industry and market changes

• Demographic changes

• Changes in perception

I would add that there's a difficult paradox inherent here: innovation usually comes along not when one or two of these sources appears statically, but when two or more of them are present and interactive with one another, and that the more sources and the higher the interactivity, the greater the environment for innovation. Indeed, this is what usually makes innovation so difficult: the sources are commonly reflexive, and influence the process and outcome of one another. Success in innovation however comes out of managing these components individually once they take on this reflexive relationship.