Week 11 Reading Reflection

The reading of today was "You need an innovation strategy" by Gary Pisano. Gary in this wants to demonstrate the real cause of why so many businesses fail to improve in their attempts to innovate. The author's answer to this is the lack of an innovation strategy. He highlights that companies follow common steps to develop their company's innovation aspect but these companies don't realize that there's no specific strategy that suits all companies. Aping their competitor's strategy is also not an answer. I agree with the author with this that some companies do what everyone else does making them incapable of realizing their actual values and goals. That's why more and more companies are now creating a group in which the company talks about their short-term and long-term goals and analyze their values and expectations from every single one in the business to achieve those goals. Connecting and organizing the many different roles of each section of a company towards the main goal is also crucial for success. This way the company is focused and determined.

What an innovation strategy does is "help you design a system to match your specific competitive needs.". Thus, having an innovation strategy involves understanding what innovation is and what's its value. Will innovation create value for potential customers, how will the company find that value and what types of innovations will the company pursue once the value is found? Everything becomes a plan, everything has a purpose. So, in addition to what the author mentioned, I added that companies should understand what innovation is and should know the different ways innovation can benefit both the venture and the customer.

Later on, the author mentions different types of innovations such as routine, disruptive, radical and architectural innovations. It is said that routine innovations are not good for companies. I don't agree with that, as the author doesn't either. Routine innovations help explore the capabilities of the company. They also offer customers different versions of their product/service. These different versions help the company to always develop and do research, till the next innovation comes up. It kind of trains the "brain" of the company to always be active. Of course, competitors will follow, but if the company keeps developing, the imitators won't be able to reach their competitive advantage, unless a radical innovation comes up. In any case, depending on the goal of each company, the innovation strategy has to focus on improving either technologically or modifying the business model.