Often the capability of innovation from directly inside an organization is very different from the acceptable or purchase of radical technological change. In some instances there is also the chance for powerful services changes due to environmental disruptions such as in the case of AirBnB which in many cases no one even saw coming. But is there a way to be able to also cultivate the capability to develop and specifically nurture unknown and left field innovation occurrences that can directly effect and drive an organizations unexpected growth.
In ” Critical Success Factors for Radical Technology Innovation ” we see the capability to address “planned radical innovation ” should first be analyzed from the perspective of an R&D project and its transferability to operations, and where we see the 1st breakdown of the ” innovation ” method itself, here, actualized as new product development. think Makerbot being acquired by Stratasys whose patents had ultimately expired thus allowing the doors to be opened for further development of a market almost completely ignored by Makerbot at the time. Radical innovation is not normally anywhere close to typical transferr to operations modes. Radical Innovation is itself, not likely to be accepted by the parent organization. With the reality check of technological innovation and its acceptance in the marketplace, this is again more connected to new product development rather than innovation formally. but when looked at as an internal venture, separate from ongoing business which is valid and important but again more easily accepted when the ” innovation ” itself has the capability to be easily accepted and which can sometimes co-exist inside organizations already delivering substantial revenue.
When looked at withing the context of a change in corporate strategy in terms of diversification and strategic focus, this is where there is the closest analog to shifting capabilities of a firm and as an example what happened with Apple and the purchase of NeXT which allowed the Mac product line to take a radical jump in it’s ability to push out rival firms in the education space – a place where large industry players had a very strong hold at the university level but where Apple had almost taken over at the lower educational levels with it’s Apple II line many years before
Where the idea of internal innovation is a possibility in firms who are highly R&D focused, incremental innovation ( more closely identified as new product development efforts ) have a substantial advantage over radical innovation efforts that have a completely different mechanism for success to be assured. In that way, the capability to alter and directly effect the outcome and radical innovation efforts substantial care must be made to the integration process over all other factors so that organizations/organisms easily accept the changes that are taking place.
