Recently, someone asked me why we called our firm Browne Innovation Group. The point of their question was the word “Innovation.”
Actually, that was a really good question and after I told them the reason, they said, “You should write that in a blog.”
So, here it is.
If you look up the word 'innovation' in the dictionary, it can be a bit confusing and even misleading on first read. Typically, the first definition is: “Something new or different introduced, as in; numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.”
But, you need to be careful that you don’t confuse innovation with invention. 'Invention' is defined as: “something that did not exist previously.”
Invention is something brand new.
Innovation is something new or different, but, refers to a variation on a theme or an iteration of the previous thing or idea.
The point of drawing the distinction is to explain that our philosophy at Browne Innovation Group is not to invent something new; frankly, that is way too hard and way too expensive.
Innovation used in the context of nonprofit fund raising means looking for new business models . . . coming mainly from the commercial world . . . and applying them to nonprofit fund raising.
We do not intend to invent something new; our clients still raise funds as fund raisers, but the way they do their fund raising changes as they adopt a new business model. Their new fund raising business model is an innovation over the old fund raising model.
Browne Innovation Group has found successful business models that today’s fund raisers can use as their old business models begin to fail.
In other words; we let the commercial world pioneer and perfect successful methodologies (business models) and then we borrow them for nonprofit fund raising.
-Mike
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