I was talking with a buddy today about his business. He shared how his solution works. At its core, he’s bringing together existing pieces to create a new solution. What he’s doing is highly complex. As we chatted, I thought: This isn’t a tech company, but it’s still innovative.

Innovation is the introduction of something new. The new thing doesn’t have to be driven by, or be, technology. In the case of my buddy, he’s taking pieces that already exist and combining them in a new way. Even though these pieces are readily available to everyone, no one has combined them the way he has. His innovation is in how he’s combined the pieces and managed the complexity of doing so.

He likely doesn’t think of himself as an innovator because he isn’t building a tech company, but he is an innovative founder.

Innovation doesn’t happen only in tech. Anyone can be an innovator if they solve a problem in a way that hasn’t been seen before. Even if it’s just combining existing things in a new way.