Last week saw the release of Innosight President Scott Anthony’s new book, The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times, published by Harvard Business Press. In this issue we are running an aggregated version of the Silver Lining checklist for innovation Scott has been publishing post by post on his popular Innovation Insights blog on the Harvard Business Publishing site. Here is an excerpt:
In today’s tough times, companies may feel like they have a choice: focus on innovation or survival. It is a false choice. Innovation has gone from a nicety to a corporate necessity. After all, remember what legendary trial lawyer Clarence Darrow — clearly channeling Charles Darwin — said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.” There’s little doubt that innovation is going to become harder as resources become tighter and competition becomes fiercer. Those companies that continue to focus on innovation have a rare chance to create substantial space between themselves and their competitors. Those that don’t will fall further and further behind.
In this issue we are beginning to reach into our archives and highlight some of the valuable and relevant articles there. The Clayton Christensen article below, “Defining 'Performance' in the Disruptive Innovation Model,” is one such article. Here is an excerpt:
When I set out to explain the theory of disruptive innovation, I purposely chose the somewhat generic term "performance" to describe how products, services, or technologies improve over time. This is reflected in the core diagram of the disruptive innovation model, which describes the performance trajectories of technologies over time. The diagram's axes, "performance" and "time," illustrate the observation that over time performance improvements tend to outstrip customers' ability to absorb those improvements. This results in "overshoot," companies offering new attributes for which customers are increasingly unwilling to pay premium prices.
Also in this issue Innosight Manager Robyn Bolton discusses the new rave Daily Candy and how it may have lost some of its sweetness and Senior Associate Natalie Painchaud discusses how persuading customers to adopt new habits can be critical for innovation.
As always, thanks for reading Strategy & Innovation! All issues are available and free with registration here.
