HBR'S 10 Must Reads: The Essentials

Innovation

The Classic Traps. by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

INNOVATION IS BACK AT the top of the corporate agenda. Never a fad, but always in or out of fashion, innovation gets rediscovered as a growth enabler every half-dozen years (about the length of a managerial generation). Too often, however, grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in cost-cutting drives. Each generation embarks on the same enthusiastic quest for the next new thing and faces the same challenge of overcoming innovation stiflers. Over the past 25 years, I have conducted research and advised companies during at least four major waves of competitive challenges that led to widespread ...