How Companies Use Innovation to Build Value

Every company worth its balance sheet swears it believes in innovation.

The Wharton School recently asked a number of experts about their perspectives on innovation at the Ben Franklin Forum on Innovation held recently in Philadelphia.

Some great perspectives here:

• "When we think about innovation, we should take a broad view. Innovation does not relate just to a new product that would come into the marketplace. Innovation can occur in processes and approaches to the marketplace, and in [decisions about] which markets the company chooses to serve."
• "For Procter & Gamble, innovation is our life blood. Our senior management says it, repeats it, and our organization lives it. Our consumers vote a billion times a day whether or not to buy our products. You have to have things that meet their needs and that they are willing to buy. We see value in finding new ways of telling consumers what we are about, and it's all about innovation."
• "Innovation is the primary source of value in companies. If you can drive innovation in a company, you can, at a relatively low cost, get a lot of growth and increase the profitability. If you don't innovate, you are actually destroying value because your competition will catch up to you in different ways."

BOTTOMLINE: Discipline V. Innovate Purposefully, (which is described in detail in the top-rated book Six Disciplines for Excellence) is the embodiment of innovation.