My definition of 'innovative' is providing value to the customer.
Interpretation
Innovation is about delivering value to customers through new ideas or improvements.
Mary Barra emphasizes that true innovation should not only be about technology or creativity but rather the tangible benefits it brings to customers. By defining 'innovative' in terms of customer value, she shifts the focus from merely creating new products to ensuring that those products meet the needs and improve the experiences of the users.
In practice
During a business seminar on innovation, this quote could be shared to highlight the true purpose of innovative efforts.
The biggest message I have for young women is, Don't start cutting off branches of your career tree unnecessarily early. Sometimes women say, I know I want to have a family or play in the local symphony, and they start pulling themselves out of their career path. You don't have to take yourself out of the running before you even start.
My parents were both born and raised in the Depression. They instilled great values about integrity and the importance of hard work, and I've taken that with me to every job.
What makes the United States great, the reason people wanted to live in the United States, move here still, is because of our ability to innovate.
The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That's when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.
The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which.
If every effect of any new products or methods were required to be known before they could be produced and marketed, they would not be true innovations - and thus not represent new knowledge of what people would like, if offered.
If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness.
Efficiency innovations arise in industries that already exist. They provide existing goods and services at much lower costs. They are not empowering. Efficiency innovators become the low cost providers within an existing framework.
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