So many organizations set out to innovate, but lose their way close to the finish line. All of the time, money, and energy invested loom over them like an ominous shadow of failure ready to overtake the whole scene. What happened? There was so much momentum, good will, collaboration, and then—the painful, public crash into the wall.

I had the opportunity recently to interview fellow Innovation author Gijs van Wulfen to talk with him about his new book The Innovation Maze, which is a follow-up to his great first book The Innovation Expedition. 1. In the book you cite a study saying companies reported a drop in breakthrough ideas between the mid 1990’s ...

Everyone wants to innovate these days, but it wasn’t always that way. Google’s Ngram shows that, although the term was commonly used in the 19th century, it didn’t become popular in the 20th century until the early 1970’s. Before that, managers valued tradition over novelty.

Every now and then, a study crosses my desk that causes me to assault my assumptions on almost everything I thought I knew. And a just-released report by Boston-based membership organization Innovation Leader did exactly that. The upshot: I assumed that the practice of innovation was further along than it now appears to be. Let me explain.

For the innovation practitioner, the Tehachapi Loop is worth exploring as a set of guideposts for innovation.

Over the last few posts I've been writing about the relationships between speed and innovation. What we've considered so far is that velocity (speed in a specific direction) is what many firms require, as the pace of change accelerates, customers demand more and product lifecycles become shorter.

As business begins to boom, the fight-to-survive instinct fades and the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t quite what it was when the company was a startup. Sometimes it’s completely M.I.A. More and more people seem to need more resources to get ideas implemented quickly. Eventually, the ability to flex, react and innovate is lost.

You are not a special snowflake. Many people resist innovation by talking about all of the special problems they face. Too many constraints, too much regulation, a risk-averse corporate culture, a complacent, traditional industry, or a unique set of obstacles that you can’t possibly understand if you don’t face them yourself – all of these are terrible excuses for not innovating.