Recently, INC Magazine and Wired.com have done blog posts on innovation, and both run the risk of losing the trees in the forest.
It seems to us that if you don’t innovate, you die as a company, because you’ve got to stay out in front of your competitors. One of our clients just reshuffled his list of product developments because of some moves made by a competitor.
There’s no particular ‘myth’ surrounding innovation, either; sure, it’s nice to take the latest nice bright shiny technology to market, or apply it to your product or service, but in our experience, most innovation comes from listening to customers talk about what new jobs they’d like done by your product or service.
At the same time listening is going on, some research with other customers should go on to see if they have the same or different wants or needs.
And, don’t be in a rush to market….watch your competitor who leads with an innovation to see who they fare. Improvements on first mover products usually command a larger market share than the originals.
Here are the links: http://inc.com/magazine/201309/less-innovation-is-better.html/
and
http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/08/how-technology-complicates-benefits-innovation/