Quotes About Innovation

When managers assign employees to tackle a critical innovation, they instinctively work to match the requirements of the job with the capabilities of the individuals whom they charge to do it.

Innovators were simply much more likely to question, observe, network, and experiment compared to typical executives. We published the results of our research in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

Experts' forecasts will always be wrong. It is simply impossible to predict with any useful degree of precision how disruptive products will be used or how large their markets will be. An important corollary is that, because markets for disruptive technologies are unpredictable, companies' initial strategies for entering these markets will generally be wrong.

The leading firms in the established technology remain financially strong until the disruptive technology is, in fact, in the midst of their mainstream market.

In fact, the prospects for growth and improved profitability in upmarket value networks often appear to be so much more attractive than the prospect of staying within the current value network, that it is not unusual to see well-managed companies leaving (or becoming uncompetitive with) their original customers as they search for customers at higher price points.

If history is any guide, companies that keep disruptive technologies bottled up in their labs, working to improve them until they suit mainstream markets, will not be nearly as successful as firms that find markets that embrace the attributes of disruptive technologies as they initially stand.

Discovery-driven planning

They are always motivated to go up-market, and almost never motivated to defend the new or low-end markets that the disruptors find attractive. We call this phenomenon asymmetric motivation. It is the core of the innovator's dilemma, and the beginning of the innovator's solution.

innovator's dilemma: Should we invest to protect the least profitable end of our business, so that we can retain our least loyal, most price-sensitive customers? Or should we invest to strengthen our position in the most profitable tiers of our business, with customers who reward us with premium prices for better products?

Excuse me. Can you help me understand what job you are trying to do with that milkshake?" When they'd struggle to answer this question, we'd help them by asking, "Well, think about the last time you were in this same situation, needing to get the same job done—but you didn't come here to hire that milkshake. What did you hire?" The answers were enlightening:

Professor Amar Bhide showed in his Origin and Evolution of New Business that 93 percent of all companies that ultimately become successful had to abandon their original strategy—because the original plan proved not to be viable.

The past is a good predictor of the future only when conditions in the future resemble conditions in the past. And what works for a firm in one context might not work for another firm in a different context.

Identifying disruptive footholds means connecting with specific jobs that people—your future customers—are trying to get done in their lives.

Hence, because flash cards are being used in markets completely different from those Quantum and Seagate typically engage—palmtop computers, electronic clipboards, cash registers, electronic cameras, and so on—the value network framework would predict that firms similar to Quantum and Seagate are not likely to build market-leading positions in flash memory. This

The structure of today's health-care industry is essentially structured around taking our problems to the solution. In the other industries we've studied, disruption inverts this system, so the solution is delivered to the problem. Downloadable

A new-market disruption is an innovation that enables a larger population of people who previously lacked the money or skill now to begin buying and using a product and doing the job for themselves.

Indomie noodles represent the process by which poverty, through innovation, can become prosperity.

Just Because You Have Feathers …

But this book is not about companies with such weaknesses: It is about well-managed companies that have their competitive antennae up, listen astutely to their customers, invest aggressively in new technologies, and yet still lose market dominance.

Coping with the relentless onslaught of technology change was akin to trying to climb a mudslide raging down a hill. You have to scramble with everything you've got to stay on top of it, and if you ever once stop to catch your breath, you get buried.

When a measurable trajectory of improvement has been established, determining whether a new technology is likely to improve a product's performance relative to earlier products is an unambiguous question.

Put simply, innovative thinkers connect fields, problems, or ideas that others find unrelated.

The fear of cannibalizing sales of existing products is often cited as a reason why established firms delay the introduction of new technologies.

Innovation, in a very real sense, exists in a "pre–quality revolution" state.1 Managers accept flaws, missteps, and failure as an inevitable part of the process of innovation. They have become so accustomed to putting Band-Aids on their uneven innovation success that too often they give no real thought to what's causing it in the first place.