Innovate or Perish: Managing the Enduring Technology Company in the Global Market

Introduction

. . . industrial mutation . . . that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.

—JOSEPH SCHUMPETER

The world is becoming increasingly flat and populated with knowledge-based economies. The rules are changing; indeed, the game is changing. While we live in interesting times, we are all increasingly connected, our economies wired together. Markets in most industries are becoming more fragmented and segmented. Technologies are creating new markets. The difference between products and services is becoming blurred as the company brand becomes the all-important customer value proposition. Developed and developing countries are harnessing technology and process innovations in every type of industry. Low-cost providers are also becoming premium product innovators. Innovation involves inventing or finding new technologies and processes, product creation, strategy, and management, together with business models to capture revenues from subsequent product and service sales.

Innovation is inherently unstructured, unpredictable, and risky. Nearly 50% of enterprise research and development (R&D) budgets are wasted, and in the United States this equates to approximately $100 billion a year invested in failed innovations (and enterprises with over 25,000 employees making up half this loss).^[1] The biggest challenge in innovation is uncovering the right cost-effective technologies for identified ...