Key Takeaway
Companies often struggle with innovation because they take a polarized approach, either focusing on incremental upgrades or pursuing high-risk, disruptive innovations. The middle path to innovation involves partnering with outside investors to identify and develop innovation opportunities, leveraging corporate resources and talent along with externally recruited entrepreneurs.
Summary
- Many companies, both large and small, are failing to innovate, resulting in lost productivity and unaddressed problems.
- The polarized approach to innovation is a key reason for this, with corporate R&D focusing on safe product refreshes and incremental line upgrades, while venture capitalists favor high-risk, high-return disruptive innovations.
- The article proposes the growth driver model, which involves partnering corporations with outside investors to identify and develop innovation opportunities.
- This model leverages corporate resources and talent, as well as externally recruited entrepreneurs, to drive innovation in slow-growth companies.
- The authors provide a detailed case study of how the growth driver model revived innovation at Cordis, a large medical technology device maker.
Link Analysis
The most important URL from this article is: https://hbr.org/2024/07/the-middle-path-to-innovation
