The Industrial Research Institute surveys its member companies each year about the biggest problems facing them. The results are surprisingly consistent year over year. The top biggest problems are:
1. Growing the business through Innovation
2. Accelerating innovation
3. Attracting & retaining R&D Talent
4. Balancing the short-term and long-term objectives.
Innovation is the lifeblood of corporate growth, but not all innovation is created equal. Most support incremental improvements and differentiation for existing products and markets. A few are very much different in nature and result in new market creation bringing with it billion dollar markets and significant profitability. Few companies are can repeatedly create the latter. Thus, corporate leadership looks outside believing significant organic growth is too risky and not compatible with larger corporate culture and capabilities. How then does corporate leadership get their company to innovate in a way to generate significant profitable growth in a sustainable process? .
