The Innovation Paradox
Tony Davila
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
For more than twenty years, major innovations&#8212;the kind that transform industries and even societies&#8212;seem to have come almost exclusively from startups, despite massive efforts and millions of dollars spent by established companies. Tony Davila and Marc Epstein, authors of the bestselling Making Innovation Work, say the problem is that the very processes and structures responsible for established companies' enduring success prevent them from developing breakthroughs. This is the innovation paradox. Most established companies succeed through incremental innovation&#8212;taking a product they're known for and adding a feature here, cutting a cost there. Major breakthroughs are hard to achieve when everything about the way your organization is built and run is designed to reward making what already works work a little better. But incremental innovation can coexist with breakthrough thinking. Using examples from both scrappy startups and long-term innovators such as IBM,...