Managing the “Unmanageable”: Radical Innovation [Archive.org URL]

In recent decades, one of management’s objectives has been to add discipline to innovation. Companies have greatly improved the efficiency of new-product development, and managers have been able to draw on a variety of processes, methods, and tools to maximize the return on their R&D investment.

Unfortunately, these advances have had the unintended consequence of discouraging radical innovation: technical breakthroughs that render existing products obsolete or that create new markets altogether. In this report, we look at products—not services or business model innovation. Unlike incremental innovation, radical innovation involves a great deal of uncertainty—the very quality that is not tolerated by most management techniques.

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