Clayton Christensen on why it’s hard for companies to innovate – and why it’s so rare that companies pull it off: “Never does an idea pop out of a person’s head as a completely fleshed-out business plan. It has to go through a process that will get approved and funded. You’re not two weeks into the process until you realize, “gosh, the sales force is not going to sell this thing,” and you change the economics. Then two weeks later, marketing says they won’t support it because it doesn’t fit the brand, so we’ve got to change the whole concept.
All those forces act to make the idea conform to the company’s existing business model, not to the marketplace. And that’s the rub. So the senior managers today, thirsty for innovation, stand at the outlet of this pipe, see the dribbling out of me-too innovation after me-too innovation, and they scream up to the back end, “Hey, you guys, get more innovative! We need more and better innovative ideas!” But that’s not the problem. The problem is this shaping process that conforms all these innovative ideas to the current business model of the company.”