The Innovation Death Spiral How Companies Get Stuck Throwing Good Money After Bad Ideas—And What That Mistake Is Costing Them Table of Contents
The Innovation Death Spiral How Companies Get Stuck Throwing Good Money After Bad Ideas—and What that Mistake Is Costing Them Table of contents Introduction 2 The Three Principal Kinds of Innovation 3 Understanding the Innovation Dealth 5 Spiral The Unilever Example 8 The Path out of the Innovation Spiral 11 into Successful Innovation The Innovation Engine 13 Conclusion 14 Far too many companies are now finding the downward spiral. Moreover, once exciting innovation. It is now clear themselves trapped in a phenomenon the company is perceived as less than that the gap between these two we will refer to as the “innovation innovative, it suffers both strategically kinds of companies—the ‘innovation death spiral.” The spiral begins when and operationally. For companies challenged’ and the ‘innovation a company’s new products, developed caught in this spiral, increasing savvy’—is inexorably widening. and launched with high hopes, end innovation budgets only make things up yielding only disappointing results. worse by putting more non-differentiating For companies in the first category Nonetheless, once those products are products out into the market. to break out of the innovation death out in the field, they soak up valuable spiral, it is essential to understand very resources, including manufacturing Meanwhile, in contrast, companies that clearly what is going on, and then to and purchasing capacity, marketing take a bolder, more balanced, and more make critical interventions and radical budgets, warehouse space, back office far-sighted approach to innovation are changes in the way the company operates. systems and management attention. on the opposite trajectory: becoming So the company has fewer resources a high-performing organization.
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