Innovators have an inclination and a capacity to examine what others often leave unexamined. Innovators are contrarians. In their quest to upend industry rules, they learn how to distinguish “immutable laws” from “ingrained beliefs.” They exploit the unhealthy reverence incumbents have for precedent.
In a McKinsey poll, 94% of the managers surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their company’s innovation performance.
Innovators do not spend much time speculating about what might. Instead, they pay a lot of attention to the little things that are already changing, and that are gathering speed.
Innovation gets stymied when a company defines itself by what it does rather than by what it knows or owns—when its “concept of self” is built around products and services rather than around core competencies and strategic assets.
Innovators see their organization, and the world around it, as a portfolio of skills and assets that can be endlessly recombined into new products and businesses. They are masters of recombination.
Source: Harvard Business Review
