The Innovation Value Chain : A Logic for Fixing Your Company ’ s Innovation Problems

Executives in large companies often ask: why are we not better at innovation? There is no shortage of sound advice on how to improve. You need better ideas. You need to work with others outside your company. You need different funding mechanisms. You need to protect the new and radically different businesses from the old. You need to execute innovations better. The problem is that all this advice is based on one assumption: the same advice fits all companies. But the truth is that different companies have different innovation challenges. Following a particular piece of advice can oftentimes be wasteful or even harmful. How do you avoid doing the wrong thing for your company and instead spot your own problems, and then fix them?