Harnessing the secret structure of innovation
Firms can harness the shifting importance of component building blocks to build better products and services and hence increase their chances of sustained success.
MIT Sloan Management Review 59, 37 (2017)
M. Reeves, T. Fink, R. Palma, J. Harnoss
Innovation is often viewed as more art than science. But in reality, companies can improve their odds of sustained success by taking advantage of information about the unfolding innovation process.
More in The structure of innovation
Taming complexity
Insights from biology, physics and business shed light on the nature and costs of complexity and how to manage it in business organizations.
Recursive structure of innovation
A theoretical model of recursive innovation suggests that new technologies are recursively built up from new combinations of existing ones.
The rate of innovation
The distribution of product complexity helps explain why some technology sectors tend to exhibit faster innovation rates than others.
The science of strategy
The usefulness of components and the complexity of products inform the best strategy for innovation at different stages of the process.
Serendipity and strategy
In systems of innovation, the relative usefulness of different components changes as the number of components we possess increases.