Few schools produce more successful entrepreneurs than MIT. But their students don't just learn about product development on their own time; you might be surprised to know that they actually have a class dedicated to creating breakthrough products. The course exposes students to an innovation framework, that they can utilize to create the next big thing. You can actually view the course here (complete with video lectures), and I highly recommend that you do. If you want the short version though, here's how it works:

The 2 Types of Innovation
The two types of innovation:

1. Incremental Innovation
2. Full Innovation

Incremental innovation deals with minor improvements to existing technologies. A few examples of incremental innovations can be found when examining Scotch Tape:

• new double-sided tape
• new dispensers

These minor innovations lengthen the lifespan of the product, and lead to more sales.

A full innovation is an innovation that is truly original. These are extremely rare in product development. An example of a full innovation would be the telephone when it first came out. While these types of innovations are true game-changers, they are almost impossible to come up with

How to Innovate the MIT way
A huge part of the course at MIT is teaching students to recognize the sources of innovation. A great example of innovation is the skateboard. While nobody has officially been credited with creating the skateboard, it is known how the innovation was conceived. The skateboard was actually invented by children. They thought it would be fun to attach roller-skate wheels to the bottom of boards. They had an idea, and they built it themselves (because nobody else had met that need in the marketplace). Shortly after, skateboards were being manufactured by companies. The companies didn't come up with the idea however; the children did. The innovation occurred because they built it themselves. Skateboards could actually be viewed as a full innovation

Another example would be roller-blades. Roller-blades would be an incremental innovation, because they were based largely on roller-skates. The innovators (Scott and Brennan Olson) wanted a rollerskate that was more akin to an ice skate. They went ahead an mounted wheels on hockey skates. With that, the roller-blade design was born

MIT teaches their students to recognize an unmet need, and recognize what a solution would entail. This ties in nicely with one of Guy Kawasaki's best pieces of advice: "Design like a God". When you design like a God (free of constraints), you can usually find a way to bring the results to reality. In the case of the skateboard and roller-blades, the solution didn't require anything expensive, or highly technical; it only required the recognition that a solution was possible. With that, the innovators solved their own problem

You've Already Innovated
Believe it or not, you've probably already done a fair amount of innovating without even realizing it. Have you ever created a macro in Microsoft Excel? Or created some kind of a special rack to hold all your tools? These are all examples of innovations. Innovations occur all the time when you solve your own problem. One of my more memorable innovations was a small computer program I wrote about a decade ago. The program held a collection of my best excuses. Whenever someone called with an invitation that I wanted to decline, I would consult the program, and have a random excuse generated. I created the program because I could never think of anything on the spot. So I solved my own problem

For best results, try to solve a problem that affects more than just you. The bigger the problem you solve, the larger the potential consumer base you can sell it to. Always try to base your business around solving a large, and important problem. If your innovation can accomplish that, you'll have a chance at a fantastically successful business

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