Strategic

CHAPTER 12Innovation

“Ideas are gifts from the universe. Every time I have them, I capture them right then. The more that you write it down and pay attention to them, the stronger the gift and the connection will become. And you will start being flooded with more and more ideas.”

—Sara Blakely, self‐made billionaire and CEO of Spanx

When we hear the term “innovation,” we tend to think of a cool new product or technology that's going to change the world. But that isn't really what most innovation entails. A recent three‐year study on innovation found that only 13% of the world's leading consumer product companies introduced a breakthrough innovation.¹ Most innovation tends to come in incremental doses, even for companies known for innovation. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said, “I bet 70% of the innovation we do focuses on slightly improving a process. That incremental invention is a huge part of what makes Amazon tick.”² And this coming from the company that has been awarded a patent for a giant flying warehouse that acts as a launchpad for delivery drones.

The challenge with innovation is that it can be overwhelming. Try to find a word that carries with it more daunting expectations. The key is to transform this abstract blob of innovation into a practical approach to the business. The first step in this mental transformation is to see innovation's true meaning: to create new value for customers. When we use this lens of “creating new value for customers,” innovation moves from ...