18.1. Cracking open the notion of “innovation”

Two complementary directions of using Trialectics are, again, (i) a routine view that resembles everyday use (Figure 18.1) and (ii) a more foundational understanding (Figure 18.2¹).

Innovation can be seen phenomenologically as the process (Figure 18.1) of reconfiguration of an existing (i.e. perceived) situation, with a degree of impact. This leads to adaptation (as the including notion between continuity and method), tension (as the notion reuniting interpretation and abandon), and incrementation (as the view unifying routine and personalization).

Figure 18.1 develops the concept of innovation from a more mundane standpoint. Innovating on sometimes mean:

• – resourced out of a mainstream: deviance is the attractor of self-referentiality, which has conquest and improvement as agents;
• – installing a yet unknown degree of change: transformation is the attractor of indeterminacy, which has propagation and distance as agents;
• – pursuing a diffusion effort: dissemination is the attractor of incompleteness, which has assimilation and reference as agents.

The notion of effervescence emerges between assimilation and conquest, as it means the necessary buzz around innovating. Mutation appears between improvement and distance and suggests the reaching of a no-return point at some stage. Influence between reference and propagation signals the limits of a measure of an innovation adoption process.

Figure 18.2 supplies a more in-depth view of an “Apple way” of innovating. A similar analysis leads us to perceive that innovation is a tensed quest for “what’s beyond” in an open way. And it is based on processes (Apple uses many processes), while the outside world sees reconfiguration and impact. The kernel formula is written as:

Adaptation – Tension – Incrementation

The next chapter will develop these findings as the firm’s signature, where everything appears to be on eternal move upwards and nothing can be stagnant. Every step, aligned with the gradient path, produces an irresistible innovation capacity.

18.2. Designing an expanded understanding of “innovation”

The C-K design process works by expanding an undecidable concept further. To start expansions in a most powerful way, we use the Trialectics diagrams of Figures 18.1 and 18.2.

The main finding can be formulated as a set of second generation concepts as follows:

• – processes geared toward anticipation;
• – co-evolving customer ecosystem systemically;
• – stirring imagination to the limit (both utopia and structure);
• – setting the stage for evolving environments (inside, customers);
• – providing purpose and implication to customers.

This may be synthesized as:

Every time it seeks to make a breakthrough, it seems that Apple chooses the hardest path and not an easier path. This is what is called the gradient path, i.e. the path which bears the most ascending derivative when considering the continuum on markets.

Innovating and competing are so intertwined within the fabric of Apple that it becomes hard to separate the two notions. Actually, the gradient curve is the liaison path between them: first designing surprisingly novel strategic market space categories that nobody has ventured in (innovation gradient is gapping markets), then reaping the benefits while competition gathers momentum around it. While the basic mechanism is not at all new in industry, it is its periodic reinstatement (frequency of change) that sets a maximum, and arguably yet unmatched, power.

This certainly confers the most difficult path to copy for competitors. When we think that often competition works by “gravity”, i.e. by ascending to what a previous entrant has done, we see the sourcing for cycle long gaps, both technologically and market wise, where the law of growing returns work for as long as feasible.