How do companies hold onto their ability to innovate?
Managers who help their firms create and maintain an innovation premium use a different set of tools than their more traditional counterparts write Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer in The Harvard Business Review article, “Choose the right innovation method at the right time”. Tools honed in start-up and specifically designed to manage uncertainty, they continue.
The end-to-end innovation process is synthesized in their research, The Innovator’s Method, which shows how successful corporate innovators have adapted these principles to increase their innovation premium.
The article concludes: “Although the innovation process is messy and non-linear, every innovation we studied went through similar steps. If you are starting with a problem, work through the steps. If you already have a technology or product, go back to understand the problem you are solving. Avoid using surveys and market studies — really go deep and understand the hearts and minds of your customers during the process. Although you won’t eliminate the risk of innovation, you can dramatically reduce it and dramatically reduce the cost of failure, giving you multiple chances to launch a home run.”
