Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change, 5th Edition

Preface to the Fifth Edition

Innovative firms grow twice as fast, both in employment and sales, as firms that fail to innovate.¹ We know that those organizations that are consistently successful at managing innovation out-perform their peers in terms of growth, financial performance, and employment, and that the broader social benefits of innovation are even greater.² However, managing innovation is not easy or automatic. It requires skills and knowledge which are significantly different to the standard management toolkit and experience, because most management training and advice is aimed to maintain stability, hence the most sought after degree is an MBA – Master of Business Administration. As a result, most organizations either simply do not formally manage the innovation process, or manage it in an ad hoc way. Studies confirm that only around 12% of organizations successfully manage innovation, and only half of these organizations do so consistently across time.³

Since the first edition of Managing Innovation was published in 1997 we have argued that successful innovation management is much more than managing a single aspect, such as creativity, research and development or product development.⁴ Our companion texts deal with such issues more fully,⁵ but here we continue to promote an integrated approach, which deals with the interactions between changes in markets, technology and organization. In this fifth edition, we have tried to continue our tradition of differentiating ...