In a memorable scene from Mad Men, Don Draper transforms a carousel slide projector from a mere technological advancement into a time machine of memories. In another, he turns the industrywide problem of “toasted tobacco” into Lucky Strike’s unique selling proposition: “Everyone else’s tobacco is poison.”

These weren’t just clever advertising pitches; they were masterclasses in understanding that true innovation is not about what you make but how you make people feel.

The paradox of sameness

The genius of Don Draper’s Lucky Strike pitch wasn’t in inventing something new; it was in reframing the ordinary. All cigarette companies used the same toasting process, yet Draper turned this uniformity into exclusivity. This paradox of selling sameness would not be lost decades later on Steve Jobs, who understood that innovation is not about starting with technology and finding its application but about starting with the human experience and working backwards.

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology,” Jobs famously said.

“You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.”

This philosophy echoes through Apple’s history — from the iPod to the iPhone, each product wasn’t necessarily first to market or technically superior but they were first to get the human experience right.

The 3M Way: institutionalising innovation

Perhaps no company better exemplifies this human-first approach to innovation than 3M, through its revolutionary “15 per cent time” programme. In 1974, when Art Fry used his designated innovation time to solve a simple problem — keeping his place in his church hymnal — he wasn’t thinking about creating a billion-dollar product line. He was thinking about solving a human need.

The Post-it note’s origin story is particularly illuminating because it combines two crucial elements of innovation: the freedom to explore (15 per cent time) and the ability to recognise value in “mistakes” (the initially “failed” adhesive created by Spencer Silver). This wasn’t about creating technology for technology’s sake; it was about recognising human needs and finding novel ways to meet them.

The innovation paradox

Here lies the beautiful paradox of innovation: the most successful products often don’t come from trying to create something revolutionary but from deeply understanding human needs and behaviours. The Post-it note wasn’t born from a mandate to create the next billion-dollar product line. It came from someone trying to solve their own problem during designated “thinking time”.

This is where many companies go wrong. They start with their engineering capabilities, their technological achievements, their “innovative” features — and then try to find a market for them. But as Jobs understood, and as 3M institutionalised, true innovation flows in the opposite direction.

The future of innovation

The lessons from Draper’s Lucky Strike pitch, Jobs’s customer-first philosophy and 3M’s 15 per cent time converge on a singular truth: innovation is not about being first or being different; it is about being meaningful. In an age where technological capabilities are increasingly commoditised, the ability to understand and enhance the human experience becomes the true differentiator.

Consider that the Post-it note emerged not from a breakthrough in adhesive technology but from understanding a simple human need — the desire to bookmark pages without damaging them. The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone but it was the first to truly understand how humans wanted to interact with mobile technology.

The way forward

As we look to the future of innovation, companies would do well to remember these lessons. The next breakthrough product or service will not necessarily come from the most advanced technology or the biggest R&D budget. It will come from those who, like Don Draper, can see the human story in the mundane; like Steve Jobs, can envision the human experience before the technology; and like 3M, can create the institutional space for human-centred innovation to flourish.

In a world where products and technologies are increasingly similar, the key to innovation isn’t in creating something entirely new but in understanding human needs deeply enough to present existing solutions in meaningfully different ways. That’s not just good marketing; it’s good innovation.

• Christian Chin-Gurret is a writer with a Master of Science in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and a Bachelor of Science in Product Design, who offers a unique perspective on shaping the future of business through innovation, disruption and technology