Take a gander at your past, the past of your friends and family, the past of literally anyone you know. Can you name something that either you or someone around you has done, that was completely new? Or maybe something previously unheard of?

Are you drawing a blank?

Can you think of anyone who has done something that surprised or even impressed you?

If the answer is yes, then please go up to that person and congratulate them, for they have broken the shackles of normalcy and done something that is unicorn equivalent in today’s world. They have Innovated.

This post is in partnership with Jagdish Sheth School of Management [JAGSOM], Formerly known as IFIM Business School, Bangalore. It is one of the finest Management Colleges in the country, and they have a wonderful Innovation Incubation Center.

Most of you will know what an Incubation Center is. If you don’t, one of the well-known examples will be “Silicon Valley”. If you haven’t watched that show, please do.

Moving on, Innovation in today’s day and age has become quite hard. Most of the things are pretty streamlined. Most of the objects/tools are already optimized to the maximum limit.

But at the same time, there are a few stalwarts of the industry, who manage to push the innovation limit by just a bit, to set themselves apart. It can be something global like removing bezels from smartphones to enhance user experience, or something local and need-based innovations like an automated browser extension that will help you get a slot in the world’s largest vaccination drive.

Let’s answer this first, What is innovation?

A lot of industry experts define innovation in their own different way. On the surface, all these definitions seem totally different, but after performing a drill-down operation, we can find the crux of all the definitions is the same.

• Innovation is the changes one should ponder, consider and implement, in order to stay relevant in the industry.
• Innovation is the physical manifestation of a creative idea, in order to make lives better.

Innovation is nothing but Creativity. If you can drum up some creative ideas to make a product even 5% better, then you are off to the races.

Creativity is like crunches for your brain, it helps emotional development, helps stabilize our wandering thoughts, and in general boosts our mood and lifestyle. Doing even just a bit of creative tasks in a day can bring an uncanny amount of satisfaction. It makes us feel good about ourselves.

Now, what if you can bring the feel-good feeling of creative nature, and shower the people around you with it? To put it in simpler terms, what if you could make your community a better place by simply doing something creative? It’s a Win-Win scenario, a Blue Ocean.

You will be making yourself feel better and at the same time, you’ll take those around you, with you. This can be something simple like starting a blog to help others see the world in a different way (Ahem), or it can be painting the walls of an entire village, so that the kids of economically unlucky families, can still be invested in education. Yes, this is a true story about a village in Solapur (City in Maharashtra, India).

Innovation exists in all shapes and forms, one just needs to have an eye for it or the faith to make that leap, or the willingness to support someone who’s trying. Be a Shark. (Shark Tank).

Why I started this blog, has a direct link to what can lead to innovation. It is governed by a different, analytical outlook towards life. If you know why a certain thing has happened, you can be pretty sanguine about it, especially when it is a less than optimal outcome.

The word innovation, however, is severely overused these days and often used incorrectly as well. As the world advances, the word innovation is often thrown around, when people actually mean “cool”. So there must be an innovation quotient, which might be able to appropriately evaluate the innovation.

Now that we have exposed the true face of innovation, we can start to work our way towards it. Find what inspires us, find what motivates us, find what boosts our creativity and most importantly, find things around you that you would do differently than the sheep.

Personally, for ideas for my blog, I rely on the social interactions, mannerisms, “conventional ways” and in everyday life in general. I have said it before and that is still true,

The way some people behave just bewilders me.

There are a few tried and tested ways to boost your creativity. Here are a few which I use, and therefore would personally and strongly recommend.

1. Music
   • Try listening to some tunes that won’t distract you from your primary tasks. It may seem stupid at first, but try listening to gaming music. These tunes are designed specifically to engage your mind and keep you engrossed. I have personally used the music of these genres while working as well. Also, you can try lyrical songs (e.g. Eminem songs) and try to listen to the words rather than the music. You will understand the song on a new deeper level, and it will jump-start your analytical brain.
2. Nature Walks
   • If you’re a bloke like me who likes wildlife and nature, then this is it for you. A walk in a wooded area or your local hill or even feeding your neighborhood strays can have an uplifting effect.
3. Have a conversation
   • Having an engaging conversation with your peers and the people with who you vibe, can be quite energetic. Have a swing at it. You never know, you might make some unexpected connections.
4. Play Games
   • Yes. Video Games. Especially First Person Shooter games, enhance your hand-eye coordination as well as make you more receptive to changes in your vision. It is a widely proven hypothesis that playing FPS games, improves your cognitive ability. Even Forbes acknowledged this fact based on a study with 500 12-year-olds, who showed higher creativity levels and increased cognitive, spatial abilities, than the non-gamers.
5. Laugh/Watch Stand up
   • I don’t think this needs any sort of explanation. After all, Laughter is the best medicine.
6. Do what you love
   • I love to cook, I love to try out new technologies, I love to play new games, I love listening to music. All these things, boost the mood. I love to watch MasterChef Australia, it inspires me to cook new things AKA boost creativity. Your mind is a drug addict. It needs certain stimuli to make it work its magic. No, not the actual drugs, never the actual drugs. But emotional drugs and chemicals. Have a look below, these the things that help improve your mood and the emotional drugs associated with them.

When it comes to innovation, the most prominent and latest innovations are taking place in the tech industry. Had I dared to touch upon that in this post, it would have been tremendously jarring and insanely gargantuan.

With this, I hereby announce the launch the TechOutlandish blog. Where in line with the innovation theme of this post, I will be focusing on the new developments in the technological world. This parallel blog would essentially combine my analytical outlook and my passion and child-like enthusiasm for tech.

Please head over there and show your support! If you’re not much into technology, but know someone who might be, please share the word! You know and Love my analytical content, the technology channel won’t be any less outlandish. You’ll find the link below. Right now, it just has a sneak peak of upcoming posts. Subscribe to both the blogs, to be notified of the updates to the post!

TechOutlandish Blog

Cheers and Go Nuts!