Is Peanut Butter Pop-Tart an Innovation? That is the provoking title of a great article by Dennis K. Berman in the Wall Street Journal this week on companies confusing product upgrades with breakthrough innovation.
Companies, having to cope with stagnating economies in the last five years, are looking for new ways to grow their businesses. They're looking for new products, markets, business models, customer groups and distribution channels. As a consequence the word innovation is everywhere these days. They have 'Global Innovation Centers', 'Innovation Academies', 'Innovation Portals', 'Innovation Scoreboards', 'Innovation Systems', 'Innovation Boosters' etcetera. Furthermore 6 out of 10 CEOs state in a 2013 survey of PWC that innovation is their primary focus or one of their priorities. So you might conclude there's a big effort within companies to be innovative. But are they really?
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