The most trendy right seems to be innovation. Companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google has created a wave of management literature, lectures and theories that will help others to think as creatively.
Innovation has long been recognized as key to getting businesses to achieve success. Innovation creates new markets and opportunities for improvement. In a study by the McKinsey Global 84 percent of business leader’s states that innovation is extremely important for the company’s growth strategy. Innovation as a keyword in the book titles at amazon.com gives over 40,000 hits. It says a lot about the trend that prevails. Even in Sweden, the trend has taken root. Apple founder Steve Jobs says that innovation happens when you hire a sufficient number of smart and innovative people. Something that many Swedish companies have focused on and the result is a growing demand for entrepreneurial and creative innovators…
Maybe we see a new paradigm shift as company previously saw technology as the major driving force for innovation has now been given a more outside-in perspective. A market driven perspective. One can see that innovation is seen as a strategic way to change the market structures, creating barriers for competitors and change the maturity of a product. Innovation can, by making improvements, create new competitive advantages over competitors. To offer something better than it already on the market is a way to temporarily increase the market share. A revolutionary innovation captures market share from other companies more permanence, such as when Apple introduced the iPhone. An innovation may also create barriers for competitors, by being too difficult to imitate or copy. In the end it’s about differentiate itself from its competitors. And if all this is true, it requires companies to be more open and based on customers insights when they develop new ideas, hiring people and develop them self’s.
Also read my and Maria Sporre’s trend-watch about the subject on http://www.dfkompetens.se/trendspaning/veckans-entreprenorskap/2010-12-10_innovation/index.xml
