The 2020 A to Z of Innovation Jargon
Know your Ideation from your Ideo
After working in full-time innovation teams for many years, I’m fully immersed in the culture of “Innovation”, with all that entails — agile methodology, ideation, guerrilla testing, arguing and more. For anyone out there new to the wonderful world of innovation this guide should help you navigate your way through the transformational jungle of buzzwords, covering everything from design methodologies to hardware to cloud vendors and more.
It’s also quite long so I’d suggest reading after lunch when you can’t face actually working for a while longer.
As innovation is about pushing past preconceived boundaries and ideas, and it’d be good to get a definition of what innovation actually means, I’m going to start with:
I is for … Innovation!
Defining Innovation is a bit like asking people from Ireland* which bar serves the nicest pint of Guinness; you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a different answer from everyone you ask. A few different definitions of innovation:
- Doing something new e.g. the first company to use a chatbot for customer service on their webpage.
- Doing something new, in your company/industry/wherever. e.g. even if all your competitors now have chatbots on their webpages for customer service, if it’s your first chatbot, it’s innovation.
- Improving something e.g. your chatbot used to be awful, but now it actually can understand what people are asking it to do.
- Improving efficiency or productivity leading to $$$ savings. This is a big one, as a huge percentage of ‘innovation’ work that I have been involved in, or seen elsewhere, has been all about saving money by making things more efficient, usually through automation.
Which one is it? I believe it’s only the first one — actually doing something new; brand new and not done before. This is the most riskiest form of innovation however, so a lot of people involved in innovation in companies think it’s the other ones, as they’re easier. Making money from new products is difficult, saving money by automating old processes is easier, so that’s what gets called innovation. Anyway, I promised you an A to Z, so I’ll let you decide what Innovation means to you in your own time!
Ok now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s kick off properly:
A is for agile
As in agile methodology, the opposite of old school waterfall style project management. This is a classic “Doing something new in your company” innovation — agile is still new to a lot of people so can seem amazing if done properly.
Regardless of whether you’ve used it before or not, it’s essential for innovation, where short, impactful projects are preferred to year long monsters.
More info here: https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-the-agile-manifesto/
A is also for AWS (Amazon Web Services)
AWS is Amazon’s pretty incredible ‘cloud computing platform’, but that’s a bit like calling Amazon itself ‘somewhere to buys things online’. AWS is a an ever expanding suite of technology products and services that has and is continuing to revolutionise both how companies deliver their technology solutions and also the businesses themselves that they support. AWS has everything from domain hosting to machine learning solutions, with a massive variety of tech in between.
As an engineer, AWS makes my life much easier and is abstracting away a lot of the menial technical tasks that I had to do before — like looking after servers.
One note of caution however — like any massively popular and useful platform, companies may end up becoming too dependent on them. I’d see a somewhat analogous company being Facebook — it’s gotten to the stage where they are the social network, and people may feel they have to use it as there is no other viable choice.
AWS re:Invent is AWS’s annual developer conference, and lots of my colleagues attended. I didn’t, partly as the concept of what is basically a pilgrimage to worship at a tech alter makes me slightly uneasy for a number of reasons.
More info here: https://aws.amazon.com/
A is also for Azure
AKA Microsoft’s competitor to AWS. Part of the problem with using cloud services is that the main players— AWS, Microsoft and Google, continually release or update services. It’s a bit like having a favourite donut shop in Dublin*, where there’s basically a donut shop on every street now. Which one has the best glazed donut?! It’s impossible to decide! More info here: https://www.krispykreme.ie/our-doughnuts/
No, wait I mean … https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
A is also for Alexa
Everyone should have heard of Alexa by now? Amazon’s voice assistant, mainly used via Echo devices, and semi-useful, depending on where you live and what services your interested in.
It can be quite entertaining watching your four year old scream “Belexa, play Little Mix!” in frustration at it, but as to whether your company should create a “Skill” (app) for it, really depends on the use-case and whether you think your customers would engage with you via voice assistants.
More info on developing for Alexa here: https://developer.amazon.com/ (note that this site is not on AWS for some reason).
A is also for Augmented Reality (AR)
A personal favourite of mine, AR is the display of additional information onto a real-world view, usually via a camera lens or AR headset.
AR is definitely of interest to a lot of businesses but does not currently have potential for massive value i.e. $$$, regardless of what you read. Long-term, I believe AR will be the next big technology and consumer leap, but we aren’t there yet.
More info here in another of my A to Z marathons: https://medium.com/libertyit/the-2019-a-to-z-of-augmented-reality-474f595b687a
A is also for Artificial Intelligence (AI)
As a buzzword acronym, AI has been kind of replaced by ML (Machine Learning), but for most usages they’re the same; using data to learn how to do something automatically.
I can’t stress enough how big AI/ML is in innovation / tech / business terms currently (and for the foreseeable future). As I said at the top, most companies’ concept of innovation is any way to save money, and AI/ML provide a great means of doing so.
Have millions of paper documents? AI can help. Need a way to figure out what products to offer which customers? AI can help. Need to perform facial recognition on your own populace for potentially nefarious government purposes? AI can help.
The “democratization” of machine learning, via cloud services, has opened up this field to engineers, not just data scientists, so expect much more projects in 2020 to include/focus on this.
B is for Blockchain
AKA the Emperor’s New Clothes. Blockchain is probably the best example of a technology looking for a problem, and has been massively over-hyped, mainly by consulting companies and startups.
If you have a problem that involves:
- Multiple parties that don’t trust each other
- Something that would be suitable to be distributed
then maybe blockchain can help, but for nearly every use-case I’ve come across, a database with some decent security will do the job just as well.
To steal a line from one of my previous posts, if the person telling you that blockchain is the answer is wearing a lovely suit and is a “Senior Manager of Blockchain Technologies” in An Important Consulting Company, take a leaf out of Douglas Adams’ book and ask them what the question is.
B is for Big Room Planning
Big Room planning is an agile method of planning, where everyone involved in a project gets together to collaborate. If ran correctly, can be of great value.
C is for the Cyber Truck
Tesla’s latest vehicle, it looks like it belongs in a Blade Runner movie. Worth mentioning here as Tesla actually takes risks on new products … AKA real innovation ;-) I may not ever own one as I wouldn’t fit my 4 kids, one cat and one dog into it, but I’d definitely like one.
C is for Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency but there are many others. A bit like blockchain, this is really only of interest if you’ve got money invested in it being of interest.
C is for Computer Vision
Computer vision relates to using technology to get insights from image & video data. Along with NLP (Natural Language Processing), it’s one of the main “areas” for innovation exploration in enterprises.
C is for Crazy Eights
Crazy eights is a method used for ideation where you have to come up with 8 different possible solutions to a problem. e.g. if you think chatbots are the answer, awesome! Just tell me 7 alternatives nothing to do with chatbots!
It’s a very powerful tool that really makes you consider other options and is best undertaken by individuals in groups i.e. if you have a group working on a problem, everyone comes up with their own 8 solution ideas — this generates more ideas but also gives more introverted group members a chance to be noticed.
D is for Deepracer
AWS Deepracer is a small racing car developed by AWS to help teach developers about machine learning. It’s actually a really clever way to get people interested in the area, and frankly, is a little bit cool aswell. I may be biased, as a team from my company recently came in 5th place in the world finals at the aforementioned AWS re:Invent! More info on their journey here, and official info on Deepracer here: https://aws.amazon.com/deepracer/
D is for Deep Composer
Not happy with mini racing cars, AWS also just launched the Deep Composer, a musical keyboard to, again, help people learn machine learning. More info here: https://aws.amazon.com/deepcomposer/
D is for DeepLens
Ok, one more to make up the Holy Trinity of AWS Machine Learning Devices! The AWS DeepLens is a camera that can run ML models locally, so you don’t need to stream video up to the cloud to be published. More info here: https://aws.amazon.com/deeplens/
D is for Drones
No innovation list is complete without mentioning drones, which can be of good business value if used correctly. A colleague of mine recently showed me how he used photos taken from his drone to create a 3D model of his house, which is pretty cool for something not too expensive bought online.
D is for Data Science
See A is for Artificial Intelligence!
D is for Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a method/process of developing ideas/designs that is heavily used (or should be heavily used) in innovation. The focus is on understanding the real underlying problems, and the people who are affected, and uses various hands-on exercises to work through the stages.
Earlier this year a colleague and I ran one for local libraries in Dublin, to ideate on the Future of Libraries, nothing to do with our dayjobs, but still highly enjoyable! Check it out here: https://medium.com/libertyit/human-centred-design-for-the-future-of-libraries-13b24127f9cd
D is for Digital Transformation
I’ve been working in large enterprises for about 13 years now and I don’t think they’ve ever not been in the middle of a “Digital Transformation”. It’s a bit like ‘clearing out the clutter” at home, it’ll never be finished.
D is for Disruption
“Transformation” is probably more of buzzword recently, but for a while, if your new product didn’t “disrupt” an existing industry, it wasn’t worth talking about. If you can actually disrupt a common way of doing something, and make money from it, you’re probably going to end up with private jets and a house somewhere nice in France, but it’s really difficult to achieve.
D is for Driverless Cars / Trucks / Buses
Driverless cars will eventually supplant drivers, it’s only a matter of time. Expect its first proper iteration to be huge fleets of driverless taxis operated by companies like Waymo (off-shoot of Google).
It’s commonly quotes in tech articles that truck drivers are going to lose their jobs en masse, but I’d expect taxi and bus drivers to go first. However — governments may block this with regulations, for social reasons, so it’s not an absolute foregone conclusion. e.g. in Ireland, only taxi drivers are allowed be Uber drivers — to protect the taxi industry here.
D is for Desirability
Part of the Innovation Three — Feasibility, Desirability and Viability.
Desirability — will users actually want to use it.
E is for Elon Musk
The CEO of Tesla, the Boring Company and Space X, he’s a bit like a lot of famous tech CEOs, controversial but coming up with some incredible innovations, like SpaceX’s reusable rockets.
E is for Ethereum
Ethereum is probably the other most mentioned Blockchain technology (after Bitcoin). It has a concept of “Smart Contracts” which can be used to take actions after pre-defined events. e.g. if an index reaches a certain value, actions that have already been agreed can be executed. More info here: https://ethereum.org/
E is for Event Storming
Event storming is another type of agile workshop that is used to quickly explore business domains / problems. Expect lots of post-its! More info here: https://www.eventstorming.com/
F is for Fitbit
I’m only joking! This is an innovation blog remember!
F is for Flying Cars
Not joking this time — several companies are exploring “flying cars” which are basically large drones capable of transporting people comfortably and clearly.
Expect them to eventually take off (sorry) in the not too distant future, for people with lots of $$$.
F is for 5G
Ok, phonetically! 5G is the latest cell network that promises vastly superior internet speeds, which (should) lead to much more data-heavy applications being possible on mobile phones. It may take a while for companies to figure out how to take advantage of it, but eventually it should enable a lot of new products and services.
F is for Feasibility
Part of the Innovation Three — Feasibility, Desirability and Viability.
Feasibility — is it actually possible.
G is for Guerrilla Testing
Guerrilla testing is where you ask random people somewhere like a café or street to test something — like an app. Its purpose is to quickly get feedback without having to go through a lengthy process like focus groups or other more formal methods. Particularly useful for testing a new feature or design.
Usually helps if there’s a small incentive … like delicious glazed donuts.
G is for Graphene
Graphene is a material that always gets mentioned in these types of lists but that I’ve never actually seen or heard of in real life. I may just not be in know, so let’s leave it in for now.
G is for Google Cloud Platform
Or GCP for those who like their acronyms. Google’s version of AWS / Azure.
More info here: https://cloud.google.com/
G is for Google Glass
Yes, the Google headset still exists, and I’m mainly mentioning it as I’m currently trying to persuade my company to buy some! Until Apple release a pair of AR glasses, they’re the most likely to be of use to enterprises for use-cases such as improving efficiencies of field operatives. More info: https://www.blog.google/products/hardware/glass-enterprise-edition-2/
H is for Human Centred Design
See D is for Design Thinking!
H is for HoloLens
Microsoft’s augmented reality headset, it’s interesting but there’s no mass use-case to bring value yet to most businesses. More info here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens
H is for Horizons
Horizons 1, 2 and 3 are a popular method of defining work / growth strategy in terms of how short, medium or long term they are.
Feel free to throw into conversations,”We’re focused on Horizon 2 at the minute, but have a couple of Horizon 3 moonshots in the hopper as well”.
From McKinsey, more info here: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-three-horizons-of-growth
I is for Ideation
As in coming up with ideas! Remarkably enough this stage can be left out of a lot of ‘innovation’ projects as people make the mistake of thinking they know what the answer is. e.g. “Let’s build a chatbot!”
Used correctly, ideation can be incredibly useful, and there’s many techniques to help you do it. See C is for Crazy Eights!
I is for Ideo
Ideo is a famous design house, more info here: https://www.ideo.com/
I is for Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT is another buzzword that consultants will tell you will be worth $50 billion dollars by 2025, but are never too clear about when the $50 billion dollars will actually start.
It’s basically anything connected to the Internet — cars, fridges, lights, clothes, whatever. Long term there’s absolutely value but needs research and thought to find the right use-cases to go after.
I is for iPhones
A lot of people thing that Apple don’t innovate anymore because they haven’t really brought out any major new products (with the exception of the Earpods) in a while; but I believe that the new features they continually add to the iPhone is innovation.
This video is from an iPhone project I made using more or less out-of-the-box functionality in iOS 13 when it came out:
Just because the phone itself doesn’t seem that different, doesn’t mean what it’s capable of isn’t evolving rapidly each year.
J is for Java
Sorry, couldn’t resist another joke!
J is for Jupyter Notebooks
A main tool of machine learning, mentioning these in conversation should immediately improve your street-cred with the data scientists.
“I threw it into a Jupyter Notebook, and wham, we can now recognise kittens with 87.5% accuracy”.
More info: https://jupyter.org/
K is for Kotlin
Kotlin is a programming language growing in popularity, mainly as Google now support it as a main development language for Android apps. Worth mentioning here in case it comes up in conversation.
Someone: “I’ve been thinking of developing our latest app in Kotlin, not Java”
to which you can reply knowledgeably: “Nobody downloads apps, do a web-app in React instead”.
L is for LIDAR
LIDAR is a type of sensor on driverless cars, used to “see” the surrounding world. Feel free to impress people by letting them know it stands for Light Detection and Ranging.
More info here: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/lidar.html
M is for Machine Learning
See A is for Artificial Intelligence!
M is for Magic Leap
An overhyped augmented reality headset, which so far hasn’t lived up to its promotional material.
M is for (Truly) Magical
If, like me, you adhere to the Steve Jobs school of describing products, you will enjoy referring to your new innovative works as being truly magical e.g. “Our new customer service chatbot offers a truly magical experience for our customers”.
Can be used in combination with transformational, ground-breaking and if you really want to push the boat out, once in a generation.
M is for Moonshot
A moonshot is an innovation project that initially may seem almost unattainable — like driverless cars, or curing a disease. Highly unlikely your company is actually investing in one.
N is for Natural Language Processing (NLP)
NLP has been around for decades, but like a lot of areas is benefitting from new cloud based AI/ML services. It’s basically anything to do with processing language — documents, audio files, whatever.
N is for Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear Fusion (as oppose to Fission) is the most likely method of achieving “free” energy. If it’s ever actually done, it’ll be a massive game-changer for multiple industries. More info here: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50267017
N is for Nreal
Nreal are a China based start up working on AR glasses, and are being sued currently by Magic Leap for allegedly stealing designs and tech! Note their web address chucks in AI for good measure! https://www.nreal.ai/
O is for OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
No, not a joke about a 1970’s technology, pretty much every business team I’ve talked to over the last year has mentioned two things — documents and using OCR to get meaning from them or automating their processing.
Again, there’s now multiple new cloud services that make its use much easier.
O is for the Oculus Quest
The Oculus Quest is Facebook’s latest VR device and is pretty good. functioning (like the less expensive Oculus Go) as a standalone device (i.e. no computer needed) it can track movement, so users can walk as they use it.
P is for Python
Another programming language, I’m mentioning it as it’s both a great way to introduce people to coding and to do really complex coding for machine learning!
P is for Personalization
Personalization is making products and services designed for mass use, more relevent to individual users. If done properly, it could lead to much better engagements with customers. If done incorrectly, it may raise privacy alarm bells.
P is for Privacy
Which leads nicely to privacy. Innovation is about pushing beyond barriers and blue-sky thinking, but you’re not going to get very far if you don’t consider privacy. Unless you’re a social network of course! Then it seems to be fair game for anything!
Q is for Quantum Computing
AKA something that is probably actual innovation. Trying to explain it is a bit like trying to explain American Football to someone who has never seen it before. It seems sort of easy, but the deeper you go the more complex it gets.
Basically a way of carrying out certain calculations that previously would be impossible / take too long to run, it can store information in a spectrum of values as oppose to the usual 0 or 1
i.e. American Football is about moving an oval ball up and down a pitch, and when running a wheel route out of the backfield, the running back needs decent blocking. Starts easy but then you realise there’s so much more going on.
Luckily, AWS has just announced a Quantum Computing service, so expect to hear much more about it in 2020! More info here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-braket-get-started-with-quantum-computing/
R is for React
React is a programming language created by Facebook which is currently very popular with developers. Another conversation tip for looking good:
Someone: “We’re going to build it in Angular”
You: “What about React? Get it running on S3 in minutes”
S is for S3
S3 is one of AWS’s storage options. In tech meetings hearing “let’s just store it in an S3 bucket” is now almost as common as hearing “fancy a burrito for lunch?”. Documents, images, videos, whatever — just chuck them into S3! Then it’s nacho time!
Can also host websites! See R for React! More info here: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/
S is for SpaceX
Mentioned above already, SpaceX is a private space company revolutionising the development of space technology (i.e. big rockets) in a domain that sorely needed it. Probably the most likely way I’ll ever achieve one of my two childhood dreams( going to space, and being James Bond).
They also live-stream their launch events, with multiple cameras giving views from the rockets as they go through the various stages. I may have spent way too much work-time watching them. More info here: https://www.spacex.com/
S is for Steve Jobs
No self respecting innovator is complete without a quiver full of Steve Jobs quotes, ready to impress people with at a moment’s notice.
Some of my favourites:
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
(basically what I say to my boss anytime he tells me to do anything)
It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time
An incredibly simple but important quote — time is the main thing we’re running out of, we need to focus on what’s important.
And probably my favourite of all, his opinion on marketing people …
It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company’s not any more successful.
So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product.
Ok, that’s a long one, but totally worth memorising word by word to keep in store for your next meeting with your marketing department.
S is for Space Elevator
Ok, you may struggle to get this into a conversation without people finally realising you’ve been pretending to be an innovation guru all this time, but maybe if you throw it in with graphene and you may be ok.
“With graphene’s amazing tensile strength, space elevators may be best way to get payloads into space, at cost effective prices”.
S is for Serverless
Probably worth mentioning aswell, serverless is all about running your solutions with cloud services (like AWS) without … servers. There are many benefits — less complexity, cost, maintenance and can make a huge difference to speed to market.
T is for Tesla
See C for Cybertruck!
T is for Telematics
Telematics is using information from cars such as speed, braking, seat occupancy, whatever, for purposes such as insurance pricing. This will grow in relevance as more car manufacturers enable their vehicles with wifi.
T is for Tokamak
A tokamak is a device used in Nuclear Fusion reactors, if you really want to impress someone! Used to contain hot plasma via magnetic fields, but of course we all know that, right?
U is for Umbrellas
No, seriously. I’m not just running out of buzzwords as we approach Z … as products go, they’re pretty amazing. Good design that’s hard to improve on and does only one job but does it better than anything else — can you think of anything better at keeping rain off, other than umbrellas?
V is for Virtual Reality (VR)
VR has enormous potential, but is nowhere near mass adoption. I see the best use cases as gaming and horror, but as the tech gets better and cheaper its usage should widen. There’s evidence it can bring value to training — with good example from lots of area such as call centres and medical schools.
V is for Viability
Part of the Innovation Three — Feasibility, Desirability and Viability.
Viability — will it make a profit.
V is also for Vantablack
Vantablack is a super-black material, which it itself has been superseded by another, even blacker, material: http://news.mit.edu/2019/blackest-black-material-cnt-0913
Of pretty much no business value that I can think of, but I wanted another V, and who knows, maybe one day the CEO will be desperate and you’ll raise a trembling hand and say,”Well … if it really needs to be dark …”
W is for Wonder Woman 1984
Ok, I’m struggling now, but I’ve 3 daughters and we’ve watched the new Wonder Woman 1984 trailer about 60 times together. Nearly every TV series, cartoon, or movie has a male character as the main protagonist, so a female-led superhero film gets my vote for innovation.
And I just love the 80s music in the trailer!
X is for … X-wing?
I’ll admit, I’m almost done.
Y is for Yahoo
Ok, there’s always time for one more joke!
Z is for … ok, I’ve nothing.
If you have any thoughts or comments please let me know below!
*I’m Irish so can make jokes about Irish people.
