In a previous post, I mentioned that disruptive innovation fundamentally changes industry structure: it changes not only how value is created, but also who claims industry value. I’ve received many emails asking me to address the logical follow-up question: how does one manage for disruptive innovation? In other words, how would a CEO lead his/her firm to innovate disruptively?
Last week I gave a conference at a company’s Open Innovation Fair. There were General Managers, Country Heads, CTOs and Business Unit Heads from multiple Fortune 500 EU companies that were attending the fair. Before I started out, the CTO of a prominent German company was asked what was the most significant challenge to innovation. He replied instantly: “building an innovation-friendly culture”.
The term “strategic innovation” has often a fuzzy meaning. It’s used to mean important innovation, or urgent innovation. Sometimes, “strategic innovation” may refer to C-level innovation projects. Each of these terms provide a shed of light on the meaning of “strategic innovation”, but they fail to answer a more fundamental question on the purported strategic nature of innovation. In other words, what is it…