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Renee Hopkins, in the Corante IdeaFlow Weblog, recently posted a summary of some remarks made by John Wolpert, a speaker at the recent Return on Innovation conference, on the nature of corporate innovation:
"Wolpert made a very good point... There seem to be two camps regarding innovation -- those who view it as something of a religion, a state of mind, a way of thinking that can't really be measured very well, and those who view it as a process that can be predicted, managed, and measured in order to result in new business models, business processes and products that will increase growth. The truly successful innovators, I believe, will be those who can embrace both of these kinds of thinking about innovation."
The former approach is typified by Apple Computer, which seems to worship product innovation above all else (at the expense of bottom-line margins), while the latter approach is typified by Dell Computer, which has elevated business process innovation to almost an art form. It's very hard, however, to find companies that embrace both kinds of thinking about innovation. 3M, perhaps? Disney? |
