Snakes and ladders: Should Innovation Be An Evolution Or Revolution?

Gaia and Andrew Grant (pictured below) are the authors of The Innovation Race: How to change a culture to change the game. In this opinion piece they argue plenty of great businesses have been ruined by disruption and offer advice to ensure yours isn’t one of them…
Innovation has been studied extensively since economist and political scientist Joseph Schumpeter first suggested its critical role for business in the 1930s.
One thing that has become apparent over those years of study is that the innovation imperative in the technology sector is increasing exponentially. There seems to be a treadmill that has an automatic speed-up setting that can’t be changed, because capitalism requires constantly evolving systems and structures to support it.
And few companies are able to keep up.
The realities of the ‘innovation race’
Only one out of the top five tech companies in 1995, companies that were established at the time of the introduction of the internet, remain in the technological innovation race today.
What’s more, 14 of the world’s 15 most valuable technology brands have disappeared during the two decades since 1995. With the notable exception of Apple, all have been rendered obsolete by more agile competitors.
Many of the top companies researched in Tom Peters’ and Robert H. Waterman’s book In Search of Excellence (1982) and in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great (2001) have not lasted the distance.
Good companies can fail easily when confronted by market and technological change — even the kinds of companies that are known for their ability to innovate and execute well.
A study of Fortune 100 and Global 100 companies between 1955 and 2006 found that almost 90 per cent went through a stall phase at some stage, and fewer than half of those were able to recover sufficiently. Few of the companies that stalled for more than 10 years recovered at all.
Survival at all costs?
Survival in the competitive technological innovation race, it has been found, often depends on radical breakthrough innovations rather than slow evolutionary adaptations. And these disruptive innovations are changing the game.
Throughout history countless technological transitions have dramatically impacted rates of development and established new benchmarks. Think about the switch from horse and buggy to motorcar, from typewriter to computer, from snail mail to email.
Disruptive and breakthrough innovations have emerged as a way of dealing with gaps, yet these forms of rapid innovation can be risky.
Sometimes rapid breakthrough innovations are like a game of snakes and ladders: when you land in the wrong place you can find yourself sliding back to square one, having to start all over again.
Discover a significant new innovation, on the other hand, and you can leap ahead of the competition and scale a fast-track ladder to the top in one swift move. This race generates both great opportunities and great risks, fast winners and losers.
Do or die
The free-to-air and cable TV channels, for example, spent so much time competing against each other that they didn’t even see their new competitors coming. By the time the streaming companies (following the Netflix model) hit the market the customer was begging for these sorts of flexible solutions, and the TV channels were left struggling, often reduced to back-to-back reality TV and sports programs.
Traditionally companies within industries have focused on competing against each other through sustained incremental innovation and haven’t had to worry about anything outside their own particular world. This system can work as long as deep change is not needed.
Disruptive innovation often emerges when an outsider enters a market and defies the established system. Entrant companies have been able to trial radically new ideas and methods by importing them from different industries and applying them in a new situation.
What established companies often fail to see is that customers will go ahead and innovate, with or without their approval, according to their needs.
Beyond haphazard innovations
The challenge is that, just as we need to move beyond the slower but more sustainable incremental innovations that help us to survive, eventually we are going to have to go beyond the sometimes haphazard breakthrough and disruptive innovations that are helping us to get ahead in the game.
We need to progress to what we call transformational innovation: innovation that is fast enough to keep up with the rapid pace of change, yet is also meaningful and sustainable from a social, environmental and commercial perspective.
Gaia Grant and Andrew Grant are the authors of The Innovation Race: How to change a culture to change the game (Wiley August 2016) along with a number of other international bestselling books and resources. As the Directors of Tirian International Consultancy they help to create innovation cultures for a range of international organisations (including Fortune 500 companies and NFPs). The Grants are top-ranking keynote speakers, and Gaia is an HD researcher and guest lecturer at Sydney University Business School. For more information see www.the-innovation-race.com.
Latest News

Giving Women A Voice: VMWare’s Heidi Savva On How The Tech Industry Can Support Women Leaders
In preparation for B&T’s Women Leading Tech awards, we’re speaking to some of the industry’s most inspiring female leaders. Heidi Savva is the Director for Dell Synergy ANZ at VMWare. Savva spoke to B&T about the importance of education to encourage women to join the tech industry, and why she wishes her mobile phone had never been invented! […]

VERSA Launches “World-First” Website Delivering Hyper-Personalisation
In a move that will revolutionise website design and marketing, VERSA has launched a global-first navigation-less and bot-activated website. It is the first website to dynamically present relevant content based on an ongoing conversation with the website visitors. Utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered conversational bot technology, visitors simply ask for what they want using voice or […]

British Railway Passengers Mortified By Greyscaled Train Timetable Tribute To Prince Philip
It appears anti-monarchists & loathers of public transport scored double the fun following Big Phil's death last Friday.

The End Of Average: Why ‘Addressable Priming’ Is The Future
In this guest post, Wavemaker’s national strategy partner, James Boardman (pictured below), talks addressable priming and why it’ll be the end of average and the peak of creativity in media planning… For my entire career media plans have contained a large amount of average. I’m not talking about the quality of my planning skills (although […]

Apple “Not Against Digital Advertising” Despite Privacy Crackdown: Tim Cook
Apple’s new approach to digital advertising is set to go ahead in a matter of weeks, with advertisers warned to think about user privacy first. Previously, companies that sell mobile ads have relied on Apple’s IDFA (“identifier for advertisers”) as a way to identify specific users and offer targeted ads. But with Apple continuing to […]

QMS’ pDOOH Platform Proving Campaign Attribution
As programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) continues to help advertisers enhance their existing campaigns, digital outdoor media experts, QMS, is already seeing results pay dividends with the latest campaign for a Tourism and Travel sector client delivering over 2,000 tourist visitors who can be directly attributed from their exposure of the pDOOH campaign. The […]

Apple Will Soon Help You Find Your Anything
For years now, Apple users have located misplaced iPhones and other Apple devices via the Find My app. In case you haven’t used it before, Find My tracks the locations of iPhones, iPads, laptops and even AirPods, meaning the whereabouts of each device will come up on a map if it’s ever lost. The app […]

CBA & Football Australia Partner To Elevate The Women’s Game
Commonwealth Bank and the sport’s governing body, Football Australia, announced today that CBA will become the official naming rights partner and bank of the national women’s team, the Matildas, Junior Matildas and Young Matildas from August 2021. M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment supported Commonwealth Bank to bring the partnership together with Football Australia, and looks […]

Facebook Australia Celebrates Ramadan With Calendar Of Content
Facebook Australia is celebrating Ramadan with a range of initiatives including Lives, Reels, IGTV and more. To launch the initiative, Facebook has partnered with a number of Muslim creators and organisations, who will be sharing their perspectives of the holy month on both Facebook and Instagram. Facebook says the 30 days of content is part […]

Netflix’s Challenge To Linear TV
Netflix’s real-time streaming service, launched in France, provides an unexpected alternative to television as the platform also announced a new deal with Sony. The program, called ‘Direct’, is a real-time service with a stream that covers five days, to prevent repeat programming. It was announced in November 2020 originally and rolled out fully in December […]

Grill’d, Melbourne Storm Launch Limited-Edition ‘Storm Burger’ For Fans
The Storm burger includes the chicken wing, grapple tackle & three free ones in a brown paper bag when no one's looking.

Seven West Share Holders Allegedly Not Told Company Funds Were Lent To Ben Roberts-Smith
There can be only one winner in this whole Ben Roberts-Smith saga & that's the lawyers. And the lawyers' BMW dealership.

Twitter Users Spot Unexpected Photobomb In Little Mix Star’s Picture
This has a Twitter photobomb with a Little Mix Star. Don't worry, it's fully translated for the over 30s in the article.

Malcolm Turnbull Calls News Corp “The Most Powerful Political Actor In Australia”
Malcolm Turnbull declares revenge is a dish best served cold. And this latest attack has the Streets Viennetta about it.

The Economist Intelligence Unit Launches “EIU Viewpoint”, Political And Economic Analysis Platform
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a division of The Economist Group, has announced the launch of “EIU Viewpoint”, a new digital product that combines the EIU’s expert political insights, policy analysis, and economic outlook with forward-looking forecasts and proprietary data. “EIU Viewpoint” helps businesses, academics, governments, and financial institutions stay ahead of the shifting global […]

ITF Finds Significant Disparities Between How Men’s & Women’s Elite Sports Are Described
Study finds major discrepancies in how men's & women's sport is called. Ray 'Rabbits' Warren has declined to comment.

Hospital Research Foundation Continues Fight Against ‘The Beast’ In Latest Work Via KWP!
Adelaide-based creative agency KWP! brings more than one hundred volunteers together in an onscreen battle against life threatening diseases for the sequel to The Hospital Research Foundation (THRF) Group’s ‘Together Fight’ campaign. Two 30-second TVC’s feature the return of ‘The Beast’, who comes up against a young patient and army of real-life patients, researchers, staff […]

Hamish & Andy Oust Kyle & Jackie O From Top Three Most Popular Podcasts
B&T would love to report that some fresh, new talent had topped the podcast rankings, but alas it's the same old shit.

Blis Launches Playbook ‘Preparing For A Privacy-First World: Your Personal Guide To Getting Impersonal’
This comes with a downloadable playbook. Admittedly, not as a good as a downloadable pizza voucher, but nonetheless.

NEFF Appliances Launches First-Ever Aussie Campaign Via Keep Left
Home appliance ads celebrate the joy of home cooking, which really isn't as slothful as the sheer laziness of Uber Eats.

Archibald Williams Wins atWork Australia Account, Launches New Employment Services Campaign
Archibald Williams snares employment services atWork's creative. Hasn't quite found the time to start working on it yet.

Shopify Partners With The Peers Project To Support Millennial Leaders Podcast
Do young, high-achieving Millennials give you a bad case of the willies? You're completely exempt here.

Monday TV Wrap: Dancing With The Stars Loses Viewers Post-Premiere
Schapelle joins Roxy's husband and Mark Wahlberg in proving a stint in the slammer no impediment to career success.

Beckham Goes Floral & Chucks Donuts In Slightly Dangerous Debut For Maserati
Becks again proving he's got the Midas touch. We mean for advertising things, not necessarily as a football striker.

Increasing Presence Of Audio Prompts Launch Of S&W Sonic Branding
Globally awarded Sydney sound-house Smith and Western have officially launched a new audio branding agency, S&W Sonic Branding.

Barilla & Publicis Italy Show The Healing Power Of Pasta In New Global Campaign
Barilla Pasta unveils beautiful new spot that also works as a subtle F-you to Doctor Atkins and his fabled diet.

Colin Jowell Joins DDB’s Tribal As Its First Chief Strategy Officer
Colin Jowell joins Tribal as its very first chief strategy officer. Which, if anything, means no handover period.

InMoment Accelerates Asia-Pacific Growth With Appointment Of Carl Kimball As VP Sales
Carl Kimball appointed InMoment's VP of sales. B&T understands that's vice president and not very pushy.

Initiative Melbourne Wins Plush Sofas’ Media
Initiative Melbourne wins Plush Sofas' media, but not before cutting the tags off the office's existing sofas.

Nicole Kidman Voices Global Campaign For Healthcare Firm H&H
Nicole Kidman is keeping herself busy during COVID while at the same time trying to avoid her husband's singing.