The Balancing Act of Innovation

Innovations are everywhere – and they matter. They matter because they change our lives, for better or worse, and because they are the source of long-term growth. But is innovation always the best policy? Is ‘now' necessarily the best time to innovate? And how exactly should we go about it? This book seeks to provide the answers to some of these questions. It is not a detailed manual for innovation, since experience suggests that there is no such thing as a simple set of successful innovation recipes, which work at all times and in all places. For this reason, the book – written for practising managers and students of company-level innovation – uses a case-based methodology from which readers can learn practical lessons. At the same time it provides examples of creative approaches followed by less publicly well-known, high-impact SME innovators, or by leading well-established firms applying less known, high-impact innovation strategies. It shows how innovators as diverse as Bongo, GreenPan, Studio 100, Cronos, Belgacom Mobile, Arteconomy, QOD, Sigasi, VIB, Janssen Pharmaceutica, and Alcatel-Lucent – companies which range from big to small, high-tech to low-tech, new to old, product-based to service-based, well known to less well known – have succeeded in completing their innovation journey. The cases discuss topics as varied as creativity, growth, product leadership, business model change, as well as finance and commercialisation. There are many possible roads to innovation. Successful innovation means defining your own road. The purpose of this book is to help you plan your journey along your own particular route.