Structuring Innovation

The need and opportunity to innovate is an ongoing challenge/risk for all competitive contexts. Since the modern world has (for good reasons) an analytical bias, it's not surprising that there's a tension between incremental innovation that can be produced using analytical approaches, but yields only modest improvements, and disruptive innovation that seems to be largely the result of serendipity, but yields dramatic improvements.

This presentation by Robert Austin (HBS) is a nice discussion of this contrast/tension. My impression is that very few organizations have even a basic awareness of many of the key questions surrounding the full scope of innovation possibilities. This is especially true of large organizations whose DNA usually contains a "process maturity" gene that suppresses the expression of what Austin calls "artful making."

Here's a similar Austin presentation with an IT emphasis.

And, a NYT article on the fact that very few organizations manage the radical changes required to survive more than a few decades.