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In many different ways and places, including in Scott Anthony's new book The Silver Lining, we've been saying that the current economic climate is no reason to stop innovating. To the contrary, it's a reason to keep innovating, or start innovating. We and others have also pointed out the many start-ups that historically have been launched into difficult economies. But “keep innovating” is not just a mantra for start-ups. Established companies need to innovate as well. This issue's feature article, Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz's “Accelerating Innovation,” specifically addresses the challenges faced by established companies wishing to innovate in the current climate where time is of the essence and start-ups will always move more quickly than they can.

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— Renee Hopkins Callahan, Editor

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Accelerating Innovation
Recession means you should innovate more, not less. Here's how established companies can move quickly in releasing new offerings.

Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz

In today's environment, there is decreasing patience for slow-ramping innovation. In some contexts it is important for companies to seize first-mover advantage, while in others they need to follow fast, blunting the damaging effect of competitors' innovation efforts. No matter the competitive dynamic, it is almost always helpful to get new products or services into market settings as quickly as possible, in order to enable rapid in-market learning and business model development. Yet the new growth process is fraught with risks and challenges, and most smart executives know that even the most transformational growth businesses start small, growing slowly until they hit an inflection point and take off. How can companies find ways to accelerate the time between the origination and full realization of an idea while running the gauntlet that so often causes great ideas to fail? Here, we focus on one type of accelerating innovation: speeding up the time to launch in new, emergent, disruptive market situations. Specifically, we will examine how teams for new ventures in uncertain environments can be structured and funded in such a way as to increase their chances of succeeding quickly.
Disrupt-O-Meter: Google Translation
No matter how you say it, Google is disrupting (again)

Kevin Bolen

On June 9th, Google made an interesting request of the citizens of the world — help us improve our translation technology and the web will be a better place for all! Now, if ever there was an industry ripe for disruption, the translation industry is it. Considered by some to be the world's “second-oldest profession,” translation in today's global economy is big business, $18 billion big. For years, a variety of startups, academics, governments and big tech companies have been chasing the “Holy Grail” of translation — a software application that can mimic human quality translation. The incentive for this Arthurian pursuit is significant, as for every word translated today that contributes to the $18 billion, there are literally thousands of words that go untranslated and therefore remain inaccessible to significant populations. So, is Google on the precipice of disrupting another globally underserved industry? From a disruptive point of view, I think this has true potential.

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