The last couple of years haven’t been kind to former disruptive poster-child Sony. Yet the company has taken a series of actions that could position it to return to disruptive prominence.

What has Sony done? Is the company about to introduce new products or services that could be the building blocks of billion-dollar businesses? Not exactly. Sony has done something more prosaic—it got its core businesses under control.

It’s odd to suggest that this has anything to do with innovation, but in fact it's a vital part of the process. As we discuss in the first chapter of our new book The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, a core business that is in control is one of several necessary precursors to innovation.

Why? Well, when your core business isn’t in control, unexpected crises inevitably pop up. When those crises hit, managers necessarily and appropriately divert attention from growth initiatives toward making sure that the core business doesn’t go down the tubes.

That's what happened to Sony. From the mid 1950s to the early 1980s, Sony was an unstoppable innovation machine. It systematically launched about a dozen disruptive product lines, including the transistor radio and the Walkman.

But since the 80s, Sony’s innovation engine has suffered a long, gentle decline. It introduced innovative products like its Vaio line of notebook computers and its PlayStation line of video game consoles, but it rarely pioneered new markets.

Over the last few years Sony has suffered the humiliation of largely missing the MP3 player market (owned by Apple), and being caught seemingly flat-footed by Nintendo’s simple, intuitive Wii video game console.

When Sir Howard Stringer took over as CEO in 2005, he found business units that didn’t communicate, engineers that focused on producing the next great product without worrying if customers actually wanted the product, and a core electronics group that was losing money. The core business was not under control.

After focusing on getting the foundation right over the past few years, Stringer recently urged Sony managers to “get mad” and take back its leadership in the electronics industry. He suggested that energy, the environment, and health care could be areas ripe for innovative thinking.

Acting on Stringer’s appeal would be very difficult if he hadn't first gotten the house in order. Now, Sony might have the ability to recapture its innovation legacy.

Generally, three simple questions can help a company determine whether or not it has the right foundation for innovation:

1. Are you rarely surprised by your financial performance?

2. Are your revenues and profits growing above the average for the categories in which you compete?

3. Do you frequently lead the industry in the introduction of new products or service offerings, as opposed to always having to play catch-up?

If you find yourself sadly answering "No" to these three questions, it might be the wrong time for you to focus on creating new growth business. It might make more sense to focus on tightening core processes, improving the process by which you introduce close-to-the-core improvements, or even selling or shutting down a business line or two.

It is important to note that record-breaking growth is not a prerequisite for innovation. Sometimes your core industry is declining for reasons beyond your control. But you have to be managing that decline in a strategic way or you will constantly be distracted in your efforts to innovate.

Sony has appropriately focused its effort over the past few years on getting ready for innovation. With a solid foundation, don’t be surprised to see a lumbering giant awake in a powerful way.