After 10 years of working in the trenches of innovation, I have attempted to distill down the ten MOST important concepts that I believe anyone working in this field should be aware of:
1. Product vs Process Innovation - In my opinion, this is the highest level break-out of the painfully broad term "Innovation". Product innovation is developing a new product (iPhone). Process innovation is improving the processes employed to produce or deliver the product, and to make it more efficient or productive (eg. Robot welders on the factory floor at GM). Process innovation often falls under names like (Six Sigma or Operational Excellence). Generally product innovation is concerned with increasing revenue and process innovation with reducing costs. It's very difficult to do both at the same time, for a given product, and the emergence of a "dominant design" is what triggers the shift of effort from product to process innovation. (see Utterbeck)
2. Scale of Innovation - While it may seem obvious, innovation happens at different scales. Broad-based adoption of Personal Computers in the 80s represented a "big" innovation and by contrast the mute button on your remote control is small. Scale is determined by: size of investment, time to ROI, change in user behavior, risk of success, risk of adoption, etc. and is a relative measure. While many terms are used, I prefer: Incremental, Sustaining & Disruptive (for small, medium and large). The non-obvious part is that it is important to always keep #1 & #2 in mind when thinking about innovation, because the rules are totally different if you are working on a incremental process improvement vs a disruptive new product.
3. Technology Adoption Curve - Adoption is the risk for any innovation. New tools and practices are not adopted overnight. Like a bottle of perfume opened in the corner that slowly spreads throughout the room, innovations slowly diffuse through society. Understanding this process is critical, as new ideas are embraced first by "early adopters" all the way through to "skeptics". This is articulated in Marketing High Technology (Davidow) and more recently Crossing the Chasm (Moore).
