There are limits in life, and they are determined by who you are, where you exist, and the literal limits of what you can achieve with the tools at your disposal. These factors funnel themself into the creative process, which leads to innovation. Creativity is the process of generating an idea, concept, or novel use of something in a refreshing way. Everybody is going to mention either the textbook or the dictionary definition of innovation, so I’ll just skip that part. What I will do, is tell you how I interpret innovation. Initially, I was under the impression that innovation and creativity were one and the same, but I have since learned otherwise. You can create without innovation, but you cannot innovate without creativity. It is how creativity affects change in a utilitarian and philosophical way (Quintero, 2015). But it is not to be confused with an invention, because inventions are only innovations once they have contributed to society.
Recently, my girlfriend and her mom have brought to my attention the brain numbingly beautiful innovation of reality television that are: dating shows. Modern day dating shows must be innovative to generate an audience and to keep their attention. That’s not easy to do because the foundation of the format hasn’t changed since the 1960’s: attractive people dating. But rules are meant to be broken. A wise man once told my Theories of Mass Communication class, “First you must come an expert in a field to deliberately create something innovative.” In my words, you must understand the game in order to play it.
New dating shows are not reinventing the radical concept that the original dating show, The Dating Game, created in 1965, but they have innovated in their own right. They have incorporated new twists and turns to innovate on the genre, all with the purpose of taking an existing formula and making it relevant to an audience (Quintero, 2015). The Bachelor (2002) plays an elimination game to find love, Love is Blind (2020) never lets the contestants see each other until they are ready to marry, Dating Naked (2014) does, well, the obvious, and Too Hot To Handle (2020) get the horniest people on the face of the plant together, supplies copious amounts of alcohol, and tells them not to do anything sexual (my favorite). They have incrementally innovated on a genre that was already radically innovative. With the advent of the reality show format in 1990, the modern dating show genre is the lovechild of game show and reality television. The first step was generating a new business model, new production processes, and new formulas (Quintero, 2015).
So, this is where my incremental innovation comes into play. I believe I have the next big hit when it comes to dating shows. If my track record serves me right (millions on clicks on my personal content on social media), I can innovate on a given genre and reach the long sought-after viral status. Here’s my target audience: fans of dating shows and people who like dogs… so basically everyone. This is my single-minded proposition: A dating show for dogs. People say dogs look like their owners, so what if we get attractive people to choose who to date based on a selection of dogs… or what if they go on dates with dogs… or what if we are just watching doggy dating. Clearly, I haven’t completely fleshed it out, but I’ve copyrighted it so don’t get any ideas.
References
Quintero, M. (2015). Innovation for Media Content Creation. J. Ross Publishing.