What does the word 'innovation' mean to you?

"I encourage my team to be innovative by asking the impossible of themselves, and their coworkers. We will get together once per week and bring up situations that we think are out of our scope and then reverse engineer these ideas to see how we could go about putting them into action. To me, this is being innovative in the workplace."

"This year I introduced a virtual idea box to my agency, as a way to encourage creative ideas from our employees and freelancers. This initiative is a concept that we have now introduced to our clients. This 'idea box' allows for anonymous, or named, employees and even clients to give their two cents without feeling the pressure of brainstorm meetings. To me, innovation can mean taking existing ideas and transforming them to make them work for today's digital age."

"The store where I currently work had a lot of trouble with selling add-on products. I did some research and learned how to better merchandise for our store layout. From there, I made a presentation to the owners to show how we could better position the products and encourage add-on items near the checkout. This merchandising idea is not a new concept; however, I altered it slightly to be a concept that would interest the store owners and still work with their design concept."

"I believe there are many opportunities to be innovative in a sales environment. To me, innovation is transforming a concept or introducing a breakthrough. Last year I introduced new types of sales scripts that incorporated NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming, concepts. The scripts were well-received by the leaders in my organization."

"In my classroom, I introduced the 'innovation awards' for my students. We take the science concepts that we have learned through the year and then host a competition. The kids can have their ideas and run with them. I believe that innovation is the conceptualization of new ideas and revolutions, all of which are important to encourage in students."

The term 'innovation' is often overused in business these days and has now become a buzzword that many people don't fully understand. The interviewer would like to know what you feel innovation indeed is. Include an example of a time when you have witnessed an innovative change in the workplace, or when you have exercised creativity.

"To me, innovation means presenting a new idea or making an existing idea better. It's important to be innovative in the workplace, but often it's a misunderstood concept. An example of when I was innovative was when our company was facing budget cuts. I suggested that we begin to operate as though the cuts were already made, in an attempt to preemptively save funds. The concept worked well, and we were able to eliminate many unnecessary expenditures."

Community answers are written by other candidates practicing this set. Reading how others frame the same question is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your own.