Leadership Pure and Simple: How Transformative Leaders Create Winning Organizations

CHAPTER 6Innovation: The Fuel of Corporate Longevity

Without continuous innovation, organizations sputter and die. Nonetheless, most organizations practice innovation in a haphazard manner, apparently hoping that it will happen. In a recent survey we conducted, two-thirds of the respondents said they had no formal program to encourage the search for and development of new products, customers, or markets.

Partly because of this, the United States is losing its innovative prowess. In July 2011 Forbes published the list of the world’s most innovative companies. Fewer than half of the top 50 companies are American companies. However, the “usual suspects” are very much on the list: Amazon.com, Apple, Procter & Gamble, and PepsiCo. In fact, in these ...