Week 11 Reading Reflection

1)    What was the biggest surprise for you in the reading? In other words, what did you read that stood out the most as different from your expectations? 

It was a surprise to me that so many companies were having problems with innovating new successful products. The root cause of this is that companies fall into the trap of adopting whatever best practices are in vogue or aping the exemplar innovator of the moment. I was amazed to find out that a company can better its chances of successfully innovating by having the manager develop an innovation strategy that stipulates how their firm’s innovation efforts will support the overall business strategy.

2)    Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

I found the concept of crowdsourcing to be on somewhat confusing. The idea behind crowdsourcing is that rather than relying one a few experts in your organization to solve specific innovation problems, you open up the process to anyone which is the crowd. I understand the logic behind this with more minds and more perspectives being able to possibly come up with more ideas, but I would be hesitate of this practice, with the need to keep innovation information private to prevent others from taking your competitive advantage.

3)    If you were able to ask two questions to the author, what would you ask? Why?

I would ask the other out of the four categories listed on the innovation landscape map, which does he think has the opportunity to be the most profitable. The four categories are routine, radical, disruptive and architectural. It would also be interesting to know which of the four strategies has the most risk and capital resources required to purse.

      I would also ask the author how to develop a strong leadership culture that facilitates innovation. Proper leadership is crucial in creating an organization that can successful innovate and sustain their competitive advantage through stable continuous innovation. It would be nice to know the authors opinions on how to successfully implement strong leadership.

4)    Was there anything you think the author was wrong about? Where do you disagree with what she or he said? How?

Everything the author stated in this article, I agreed with. He clearly defined how important having a innovation strategy when pursuing innovation and clearly backs up his ideas. After reading this article I feel I have a much better understanding of creating an innovation strategy and how to implement this to successfully innovate.