The innovation pyramid presented in this paper ranks innovation types in terms of their capacity to provide organizations with a long-term commercialization advantage.
It is based on ten years of studying different types of innovation and helping hundreds of groups of MBA and Master students apply these insights to hundreds of organizations in different industries.
The innovation pyramid provides organizational leaders with a powerful heuristic to organize their strategic innovation priorities, in terms of aligning and committing organizational innovation efforts.
To help organizational leaders, this paper illustrates each innovation type with clarifying examples of a variety of well-known firms.
The pyramid provides an antidote to the technological determinism and confusing use of innovation jargon, both of which over-promise disruptive and radical performance effects. Instead, it offers clarity and succinctness of purpose both in terms of aligning and committing to innovation efforts and priorities.
