Innovation

Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of potentially valuable innovations flop because the companies sponsoring them were using the fundamentally wrong logic in managing them. For instance, as Clayton Christensen recently described in the Harvard Business Review, they insist on valuing projects in terms of Net Present Value. A different approach, we’ve argued, is […]

Editor’s note: For an opposing viewpoint on this topic, see Kevin Werbach’s entry “Why Network Neutrality Is Good for Business.” Most business executives likely have never come across the concept. Yet despite its limited reach to a small audience of policy wonks, President Obama made it a campaign issue in 2008, the Federal Communications Commission […]

What do you do when the very breakthrough strategy that once made your business uniquely powerful now threatens to turn you into a commodity? That’s the question stationery supplier Staples is facing. I still remember when Staples changed my life. Before its 1986 opening, buying stationery and office supplies was a time-consuming, inconvenient, and expensive […]

How physical space can reduce pain, lower costs, and save lives.

Last week, I swung through the United States to spend time with four different Fortune 100 companies whose revenues add up to more than $300 billion....

Last week, I visited India. It's such a big, diverse place that I can't help but leave each trip with some new observations. This time, I observed how...

It is always instructive to examine how successful firms can go wrong, even in markets that they think they understand well. The market failure of the Michelin run-flat PAX tire illustrates the common mistake of failing to realize that even a groundbreaking product has to create a complete consumption chain. Broken links in the chain […]

When stock markets gyrate and growth prospects darken, it’s tempting to rein in innovation programs and hoard cash. The S&P 500 did exactly that during the Great Recession, increasing their cash levels by over 50% to nearly $1 trillion today. As it looked like the economic storm clouds were dissipating (ah, the good old days…) […]

Companies say they want breakthrough products, but most are far more adept at making incremental improvements to existing lines. A pioneering division at 3M successfully navigated a process that leads to breakthrough thinking.

It was early Wednesday afternoon. I was reviewing the slides I planned to use for a two-hour session with a company in the Philippines later that afternoon....

For the past ten years, my colleague, Chris Trimble, and I have studied one critical question: What are the best practices for executing an innovation initiative? Execution is the poor stepchild of the innovation challenge. People love to engage in the hunt for the big ideas, but, let’s face it, without execution capability, an idea […]

Decisions about drug formularies need to be made in broad daylight.

What's stopping the rest of the world?

A study of phones, cars, and apps.

India’s iconic Tata Group is a remarkably diversified company with investments as divergent as tea and steel. As the company seeks to grow beyond its Indian roots and compete with the best globally, innovation is becoming increasingly central to its strategy. Toward that end, chairman Ratan Tata has instituted a surprising competition: A prize for […]

Walking the line between creativity and chaos

New types of investments are tied to ESG goals.

Graphics aren’t just an alternative to representation in words.

It's more global, more urban, and more winner-take-all.

Returns to innovation appear to be declining.