Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It

Chapter 8. Learning Innovation: How Do Organizations Become Better at Innovating?

The Importance of Learning

In fast-changing environments, the ability to learn faster, better, and more cheaply than your competitors could mean the difference between retaining market leadership and barely surviving.^[1] In Silicon Valley, it became clear to major venture capital companies that ramping up the sales volumes in startups always took longer and cost more than was projected. Sometimes the result was slower-than-expected growth, but often it resulted in the failure of the startup because of poor cash flow. Reviewing the successes and failures of startups led to the development of the Sales Learning Curve to guide better, faster, and cheaper sales growth ...