Capturing innovation opportunities: Learning from growth leaders
George S. Day
kHUB post date: October 1, 2024
Originally published: 10 April 2024 (PDMA JPIM • Vol. 41, Issue 4 • July 2024)
Read time: 30 minutes
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Firms that capture the benefits of innovation opportunities ahead of their rivals achieve superior rates of organic growth. These growth leaders don't wait for opportunities to appear before reacting. Instead, they systematically search for opportunities to select for development. Qualitative case analyses of four growth leaders found that each used two types of heuristics or rules of thumb while capturing innovation opportunities. Their top-down strategy heuristics were revealed with a wide-spectrum framework that reimagined and stretched each dimension of their strategy. Growth leaders also used bottom-up process heuristics to routinize and share their approaches to capturing innovation opportunities throughout their organization. These heuristics are a useful lens for studying innovation practices and suggest fruitful avenues for further research.
Practitioner Points:
- Innovation is a means to an end which is realizing a faster rate of organic growth than their rivals in an industry sector.
- Innovation opportunities are captured with the linked processes of searching, evaluating and selecting the best to pursue.
- Organic growth leaders capture their opportunities sooner than their present and prospective rivals.
- When opportunities are abundant growth leaders apply heuristics or simple rules to guide them to those to capture.
- Heuristics can be inferred from a full-spectrum-framework for potential innovation pathways that reimagines the firm's strategy.