Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - (Page 14) 14 Corporate Strategy Walking the Line It’s not innovating that’s the most difficult — it’s creating value whilst innovating. Brian D. Smith explains. or a knowledge-based sector such as pharmaceuticals, innovation is the engine of wealth creation. Almost all business plans involve the application of new ideas to increase sales, reduce costs or change the key ratios in some way or other. And yet innovation is surrounded by more platitudes and truisms than almost any other subject in business. As one of my academic colleagues once said, many books on innovation are no more than ‘management pornography,’ full of false promise that says more about the readers’ naivety than anything else. This fog of fiction makes real innovation management more difficult, so it is worth taking a step back to understand what innovation is, why it is so difficult and how, in practice, good firms make it happen. F Understanding innovation The first important piece of clarity is to separate innovation from its parents: invention and insight. Invention is the creation of new knowledge and mostly applies in scientific or technical fields. Insight is the uncovering of knowledge and applies mostly in human fields, like management and markets. Both have their origins in what the philosopher Arthur Koestler called ‘bisociation,’ in which two different planes of thinking intersect. The key point is that neither invention nor insight creates wealth until it is applied, and it is this practical application that we call innovation. A second key point is that innovation can take numerous forms. Most often, we think of innovative products or services, either in the core technology or in the way they are presented. Just as valuable, and more common, is innovation in management processes. Quality systems, alternative strategies and new organisational structures are all innovations. Finally, innovation is not always of the radical, disruptive kind from which industry legends are made. More often, it is more common, if less glamorous, for innovation to be incremental, with each little improvement building on the next. Innovation, then, is the application, rather than the creation, of new knowledge; it can be done anywhere in the value chain, from research to consumption; and it can happen in leaps or in baby-steps. But why is innovation so difficult, and what does management research tell us about why it fails?
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 Contents From the Editor News and Analysis Calendar Corporate Strategy: Walking the Line Executive Profile: The Pharmacist’s Friend Q&A: An End to Drug Counterfeiting Healthcare Cost Assessment: Ready to Make NICE? Pricing and Reimbursement: Through the Reimbursement Barriers Generics: India Inc. The Mix: New Models of Excellence Last Word: Mid-size Matters Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 (Page 1) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 (Page 2) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Contents (Page 3) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - From the Editor (Page 4) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - From the Editor (Page 5) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - News and Analysis (Page 6) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - News and Analysis (Page 7) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - News and Analysis (Page 8) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - News and Analysis (Page 9) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - News and Analysis (Page 10) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - News and Analysis (Page 11) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Calendar (Page 12) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Calendar (Page 13) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Corporate Strategy: Walking the Line (Page 14) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Corporate Strategy: Walking the Line (Page 15) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Corporate Strategy: Walking the Line (Page 16) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Corporate Strategy: Walking the Line (Page 17) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Executive Profile: The Pharmacist’s Friend (Page 18) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Executive Profile: The Pharmacist’s Friend (Page 19) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Q&A: An End to Drug Counterfeiting (Page 20) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Q&A: An End to Drug Counterfeiting (Page 21) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Healthcare Cost Assessment: Ready to Make NICE? (Page 22) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Healthcare Cost Assessment: Ready to Make NICE? (Page 23) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Healthcare Cost Assessment: Ready to Make NICE? (Page 24) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Pricing and Reimbursement: Through the Reimbursement Barriers (Page 25) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Pricing and Reimbursement: Through the Reimbursement Barriers (Page 26) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Pricing and Reimbursement: Through the Reimbursement Barriers (Page 27) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Generics: India Inc. (Page 28) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Generics: India Inc. (Page 29) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Generics: India Inc. (Page 30) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - The Mix: New Models of Excellence (Page 31) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - The Mix: New Models of Excellence (Page 32) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - The Mix: New Models of Excellence (Page 33) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - The Mix: New Models of Excellence (Page 34) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - January 2008 - Last Word: Mid-size Matters (Page 35)
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