| Ernest Hemingway (via Wikipedia) |
Most of you may be familiar with the unverified story of Hemingway writing a six-word memoir on a dare. Here's what he came up with:
'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'
The idea of capitulating essential information ONLY (in short form) has become increasingly popular, perhaps fueled by IM, SMS, and the brevity of Twitter's 140-character limit, so much so that six-word memoir books and magazines have become a common phenomena.
Much like in poetry, a concise strand of words imparts both simplicity and power - packing a lot of punch while remaining largely sparse. The activity itself can be a great creative, strategic warm-up exercise for a team.
One of our Front End of Innovation community members on LinkedIn, recently proposed a similar task to our 18,900+ innovation brain trust but he made the challenge a little more constraining. He asked the group, "in 5-words, define the difference between invention and innovation."
Here's a random sampling 10 of the 580+ responses:
- All Inventions don't become Innovations.
- Invention creates; innovation realises value.
- Novel change that adds value.
- Innovation applies invention on purpose.
- "Original" inventions versus "valuable" innovations.
- Invention: Discovery without chasing a need.
- Innovation: Discovery that chased a need.
- Innovations can happen without Inventions
- Invention investement earns innovation value.
- Innovation is invention commercialized.
Valerie M. Russo is a Senior Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a technology, anthropology, marketing and publishing business acumen. She is a published poet and also maintains a literary blog. She may be reached at vrusso@iirusa.com. Follow her @Literanista.