Companies around the globe pursue breakthrough technologies to grow. Surveys show that executives remain dissatisfied with the return on innovation investment. The article Source: The big costs behind Google’s moonshot start-ups provides some useful data. The debate among tech analysts isn’t about whether the moonshots will lose money, but rather how large the losses will
First of all, I really loved the ars technical article Is gravity not actually a force? Forcing theory to meet experiments. It has a great explanation of the new (perhaps revolutionary) theory of gravitation by Dutch theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde. I recommend reading the whole article. It has a great explanation of the theory that made
A quick article that elaborates on something that I have observed in many firms: Though it may be difficult to convince a business to invest millions in pursuit of a speculative disruptive innovation, it is much easier for a small team to gain support in pursuing low-cost intellectual assets in the name of mitigating potential
Inder Sandhu, SVP of Strategy and Planning at Cisco has written an article in Forbes about new product platform development and product improvement. The idea is that an organization needs to focus on developing new product platforms while generating revenues from incremental improvements to existing platforms. He calls it Disruptive and Sustaining Innovation. But doing
Phased development with gate reviews has delivered many benefits to product development organizations. This process ensures business perspective is incorporated into product development. Gate reviews are generally led by senior managers. Their engagement drives organizational consensus and resource commitment. Gate reviews also guide the organization away from risky endeavors by focusing on predictability and return
It takes a long time to develop new technologies and integrate them into products. The wired article How Daimler Built the World’s First Self-Driving Semi has a great example: Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, has been working on autonomous driving for two decades. … As amazing as this thing is—it’s a fully autonomous 18-wheeler that works—company
Recent news suggests that a new version of Microsoft’s critically acclaimed Surface Book is entering mass production. It appears that Microsoft had to make significant changes to the original Surface Book to meet some of its business goals… The sources believe Microsoft’s decision to lower the price range for its new Surface Book is because
The article Heritage: Prowler was a vehicle ahead of its time. | driveSRT has some interesting data points about R&D portfolio executives. New technologies can have benefit far beyond the product for which they were developed. “Magnesium instrument panels, aluminum hoods and aluminum suspensions, vital crash safety design. All are key traits featured on new SRT vehicles that
The article Organizing for New Technologies in MIT Sloan review has some interesting thoughts about organization structures necessary to get the most out of emerging technologies. The article starts off by defining and distinguishing invention and innovation: To understand the challenge, one first needs to recognize the distinction between the new idea (invention) and its
The article “Why Is Innovation So Hard?” outlines cultural challenges that prevent innovation from taking root. As we have discussed many times, development of disruptive capabilities can often fail to achieve their intended results. This means that in order to innovate we need to change our attitude toward failures and mistakes. Contrary to what many