There is a HUGE caveat to the above post. Iteration works if it is done QUICKLY. Get a working concept ready and test, test, test! Waiting for all t's to be crossed and i's to be dotted a terrible thing and hurts you in the long run.

What good is a great innovation which shows up to the party too late?

Being first to market with a "good enough" solution is still a better strategic move because you get real world feedback. Your innovation engine cannot ignore timelines.

Think innovation, Do iterations. Innovation may be more a state of mind whereas iteration is what we actually do with our hands.

I would add to your point regarding Google, the number of their products that have BETA on the logo. It seems that iterating and learning are a constant for them.

Maybe Sustaining Innovation would be more appropriately termed Sustaining Iteration.

Spot on Scott - its back to "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"! In my experience the general problem is not ideation but finding the initial market niche, making it operationally executable and then scaling and expanding fast. I do not agree with SD that it is always about being first (think Netscape and Yahoo for example) but rather being the best and most focused.

Brendan Dunphy at http://brendandunphy.blogspot.com/

Scott this is a fascinating post. I know from experience in Japan that innovation is tied directly to the "mix" - there might be a great new invention on the company's patent list, say a light projected keyboard, which is far advanced of existing products, but if it was put on the market it would seriously impact upon the marketing strategies and though bringing in short-term gains, would actually lead to serious problems later. Instead a product closer to existing lines is promoted and developed (iteration for the sake of marketing strategy). We can see this in the differences between the cellular phones for sale in Asia and those in Europe. Telephones geared for the elderly have been on the market in Asia for over a decade - today large keyboards and simpler features have now come to Europe - and they are being marketed as if it was an innovation!

I think that current intellectual property laws while affording protection for designers and so forth, prevents cross-border development, whereby for example a consultant designer from the outside sees possibilities for development and innovation of a company's products - this is not possible because large corporations wish to keep everything in-house and are afraid that the consultant will not honour anti-disclosure clauses etc. I believe if it were possible, then the iteration development
of products would actually end up being more innovative, that is going on a continuum from

pure innovation --- innovation/iteration ---- iteration

Having so many missteps in the market is not the same as having many iterations in your lab.
5000 failed prototypes is very different from 5000 failed products.

Many Generations of the same product is OK. Many versions of the same product, not OK.

check out the following:
http://blog.amusecorp.com/index.html/98
http://www.changethis.com/46.06.ConnectedIntelligence

Great comments everyone. Absolutely agree that there are important subtleties here. You absolutely do not want 5,000 failures in the market. In fact, if you had 5,000 failures in the market you are unlikely to get the opportunity for number 5,001! Also, it is important to not let a market opportunity pass you by because you are iterating. At some point, you do have to stop iterating and focus on execution.

Keep the comments coming!

Scott

I agree with much of the above..its a case of failing forward..
it's amazing how you can change your great idea ..because the market does not think it so great.
As someone who has had to change a startup because i could not think of an idea that had real value..i solved the problem by doing the unobvious..use all ideas on one platform ..and us it to as SD says to test test....on the fly.
All the above is comforting in that at least us with "junior" startups can see the greats did not have it right first time : al the time..

Ian ceo startup-poor.com

i agree on one of the comments that "innovation" means creativity that comes from the minds while iteration is something that has been done or to be done. So many companies are going up to the ladder of success in terms of business growth because they spend so much money in the "research and development" developing products or services that are always new and introduce in the market or even create a new market. And there were only few companies who have such opportunity, including those who have so much resources for innovation.

Assuming that you have a truly innovative idea, the successful implementation or commercialization of your idea becomes the major challenge. It is important that all or most of the necessary complementary assets or capabilities are available at the time of the contemplated product launch. Ideally, they are on developmental trajectories that parallel the refinement of your idea. Timing is thus critical to success. This includes not just technological capabilities of course, but market readiness and so forth. Ray Kurzweil attributes the successful commercialization of his numerous inventions to the timely presence of just these sorts of "enabling" factors.

In an interview in 2005, the essence of which has been repeated elsewhere many times, Kurzweil states:

"I began seriously modeling technology trends around 1980. I quickly realized that timing is the critical factor in the success of inventions. Most technology projects fail not because the technology doesn’t work, but because the timing is wrong—not all of the enabling factors are at play where they are needed. So I began to study these trends in order to anticipate what the world would be like in 3–5 or 10 years and make realistic assessments."

Nick Holt

The "innovation vs. iteration" false dichotomy rests primarily on a misguided yet popular belief that innovations must happen in a burst of creativity. In reality, most innovations of any importance have more to do with painstaking, resolute plodding rather than sudden flashes of brilliance.

The role of creativity should obviously not be ruled out entirely. However, popular perception grossly underestimates the time and effort it takes for an innovation to be born and gain widespread use. For more on this "Creative Burst Fallacy", see my blog post, "Hark! Did Somebody Say Eureka!?" at http://webquarters.blogspot.com/2007/04/hark-did-somebody-say-eureka.html.

I agree with the great comments and believe in the blending of iteration with innovation. However, companies need to also have a wise blending of innovation/creativity with improving organizational efficiency. Without a system for this blending, an organization can find that they are sacrificing one for the other, as described in the Business Week article, “At 3M, A struggle between efficiency and creativity.”

I have seen companies that were innovative; however, the organization did not benefit from the created technologies. This happens when either the technology did not fit into the company’s product line or no system was in place to take the innovated product or service to market. Innovation with no framework for its creation and transition to a marketable product or service is not unlike an orchestra where every person uses their instrument to play individually composed musical selections at the same time. Individually, each musical presentation (innovated product or service) could sound very good, but the beauty of each musical piece is not heard or appreciated at the orchestra level (organization or company); that is the delivery of each musical selection did not have good overall orchestration.

Earlier implementers are finding that the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system provides the framework for the effective blending of performance measures, innovation, analytics, process improvement, and control. The going beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard techniques of IEE accomplish these benefits at both the project execution and enterprise level as well.

Forrest Breyfogle