One CEO’s product development motto: care for innovations like newborns!

Will your company be like so many “one‐hit” wonders that failed because of their inability to adapt through innovation? Many companies meet this fate. Management shortfalls on the path to developing new market successes include: (1) A lack of the requisite skills and resources to sustain growth; (2) A CEO’s preoccupation with the existing business. This latter case should quickly be challenged given that the business environment will ultimately render any business concept an anachronism. The only way for a company to sustain itself is through conceiving and nurturing new business ideas that can succeed for the parent business; (3) Either no genuine product innovations, or so few the company does not develop the skill to cultivate them; (4) Entry into the innovation phase too late, such as in Polaroid’s case; (5) Belief that an investment in a new business cannot coexist with the existing business. The company sees true innovative concepts as more as a nuisance or threat to their comfortable lives than as the offer of hope for a new future; (7) The ability to create an abundance of innovation but exhibit a peculiar incompetence in creating a market for it. Witness Xerox. The challenge, then, is to foster a capability for innovation – not merely product enhancement. This capability allows a company to migrate from one business concept to the next as the market changes and opportunities emerge.