INNOBLOG

Today is the official launch of The Innovator's Guide to Growth, so in addition to Amazon, you should be able to find it now at your local live-action, in-person bookstore. To recap: this Harvard Business Press book is the latest in the series exploring disruptive innovation that was started by Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1997 and continued in Christensen’s The Innovator’s Solution in 2003. The Innovator's Guide to Growth was written by Innosight's president Scott D. Anthony, co-founder and chairman Mark W. Johnson, and partner Joseph V. Sinfield, along with Elizabeth J. Altman, vice president of strategy and business development in Motorola’s Mobile Devices business. The book has a foreword by Clayton Christensen that can be downloaded free here.  HBP marked the occasion today by issuing a press release that features links to goodies such as video interviews and the book's Facebook page.

The Fortune 500 issue had a fascinating story about Amazon.com. “It’s easy to believe that Jeff Bezos is one of the great innovators,” the story noted. “But that’s not exactly the case. His rise into Fortune 500-dom actually has little to do with innovation and more to do with iteration.”

It pains me when I see innovation and iteration painted as opposed in some way. In fact, the only way to successfully innovate is to be prepared to iterate like crazy.

There is a misbegotten belief that new growth businesses arise fully formed out of an innovator’s head. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Carefully look at the history of just about any innovation success and you’ll find a course correction, if not an outright failure.

There are many classic examples of innovation through iteration. Google was just another search engine until it iterated its way to AdWords and AdSense. About three months before the public launch of the iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent the design team back to the drawing board because of flaws in the product’s design. James Dyson created more than 5,000 failed prototypes of his wildly successful vacuum cleaner. And so on. ...

Read the rest at Scott's Harvard Management blog, Innovation Insights

If you work in a large company and you want to become humble quickly, check out Stall Points, a fascinating stream of research by the Corporate Executive Board that was recently a cover story for the Harvard Business Review. The research shows that almost all companies hit a point where historical growth rates decelerate. Once the corporate growth engine stalls, it is very hard to restart.

The study involved close to 500 companies that have appeared on the Fortune 100 or international equivalents over the past 50 years. Close to 90 percent of those companies experienced a stall, or “secular reversals in company growth fortunes.” Only 50 percent of companies that stalled were able to grow even moderately over the next decade.

There are many reasons why growth becomes increasingly difficult as a company grows. One challenge is that the hurdle for new initiatives becomes so high that many potential game-changing initiatives never see the light of day.

A few weeks ago I was with a group of senior executives at a Fortune 100 company. We were talking about the strategic objectives of that company’s innovation efforts. One executive said that $1 billion felt like a reasonable target for a generic new growth initiative. Another said, “A billion is nice, but at our size we really need to set the target at $10 billion.”

Mathematically, of course, the executive is right. It got me thinking, though. Only 261 public U.S. companies had $10 billion in revenues last year. How many of the high-flying start-up companies over the last decade reached $10 billion in revenue in 10 years? Well, Google hit $10 billion in its eighth year (2006) and … I think that’s it.  …

Read the rest at Scott's Harvard Management blog, Innovation Insights