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.
It's near impossible to always be right when you're innovating. It's easy to get emotionally invested in it, but you need to monitor its impact like a hawk and react if you don't like what you see. And if/when you pull it back, you want to do that communication with transparency and humility.
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.
You want to look at what other companies are doing. It's very important not to be hermetically sealed. But you don't want to look at it as if, 'OK, we're going to copy that.' You want to look at it and say, 'That's very interesting. What can we be inspired to do as a result of that?' And then put your own unique twist on it.
Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there.
Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.
For a long time, I've ranted against naming your startup community 'Silicon Whatever.' Instead, I believe every startup community already has a name. The Boulder startup community is called Boulder. The L.A. startup community is called L.A. The Washington D.C. startup community is called Washington D.C.
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