The Randomness of Corporate Innovation.
The Randomness of Corporate Innovation.
This businesseweek article by Bruce Nussbaum talks about how corporate Innovation is inherently unpredictable, and how over 50% of game-changing innovations arise from initiatives outside companies' formal structures and processes for Innovation.
Let me ask this in return: how will you fare if you were let loose in the pacific ocean with no knowledge of swimming?
I think that there is another way to look at the whole problem, which is that given our lack of clear understanding of Innovation as a discipline, as a business process and as a practice, it is amazing that even 40% of the companies achieve success through their innovation structures. We do not know how to swim, yet we are managing to stay afloat in the pacific.
This businesseweek article by Bruce Nussbaum talks about how corporate Innovation is inherently unpredictable, and how over 50% of game-changing innovations arise from initiatives outside companies' formal structures and processes for Innovation.
Let me ask this in return: how will you fare if you were let loose in the pacific ocean with no knowledge of swimming?
I think that there is another way to look at the whole problem, which is that given our lack of clear understanding of Innovation as a discipline, as a business process and as a practice, it is amazing that even 40% of the companies achieve success through their innovation structures. We do not know how to swim, yet we are managing to stay afloat in the pacific.
posted by Amit at
10:28 PM
1 Comments:
Dear Chris,
The notion that Creativity and Structure are antonymns is tempting to believe in. It is a luring idea to think of Innovation as an out-of-the-box process, one which be definition needs us to let go of "boxed thinking".
However, the thinking can be fallacious. Edward de Bono, for example, gives various examples of how even the creative ideation process can benefit from structure and process. See his books on Lateral thinking for various examples of this.
Innovation, of course, is much more than Creative Ideation. It may be argued that idea generation to some degree benefits from "lack of structure", but what about the other aspects? What about understanding the value concepts of the customer? What about devising a disruptive strategy based on systematic theory? What about using best practices from other industries to your benefit?
By
Amit, at 2:36 AM
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