Strategic innovation is an organizational capability the fuels growth and renewal of mature organizations.
It operates in a context of high uncertainty and ambiguity, and therefore requires different managerial and executional approaches than those that drive the core business. Companies initiate strategic innovation on a sporadic basis but so far, most have failed to sustain it and evolve their expertise.
Yet research is converging around the basic principles associated with successful development of this important organizational capability. At our recent Innov8rs Connect on Strategy, Leadership & Governance, Professor Gina O’Connor shared the results of a 25 year research program, and introduce a set of 8 tenets that enable organizations to develop and sustain a sustainable capability for strategic innovation.
Gina Colarelli O’Connor is Professor of Innovation Management and Fischer Family Chaired Professor at Babson College. She conducts research and teaches on the topic of Corporate Innovation.
Gina has published numerous scholarly papers and co-authored three books for organizational leaders on managing breakthrough innovation in large mature companies. Five of her papers have received best paper of the year awards. The second book, Grabbing Lightning was named one of the top books of the year by Strategy + Business Magazine in 2009 and the third, Beyond the Champion: Institutionalizing Innovation through People, was nominated for the Academy of Management’s Best Book of the Year in 2019. In 2018 Gina was honored to be named a Crawford Fellow by the Product Development & Management Association.
