Innovation incremental

Technology leaders must pioneer discontinuous/radical changes along with continuous/incremental innovations. Radical innovation estabUshes and periodically renews the competitive advantage incremental innovations sustain it. Pressures on the leaders are to focus on only the near-term incremental efforts. Technology leaders must, however, build the will within the business leadership to recognize that both are necessary (35). 

Berndt, Cockburn, and Grepin (2005) employ the number of medical indications to measure pharmaceutical innovation. A substantial share of industry research and development expenditures, estimated at between 25% and 30% (p. 45), is directed toward finding new indications for existing products. Berndt et al. use the term incremental innovation to describe these efforts. For the three therapeutic areas they examined, the number of FDA approvals for new indications increased substantially in the past decade (p. 27). In addition, the greater number of approved indications has led to increased utilizations of the drugs concerned (p. 41). On that basis, they maintain that reported declines in pharmaceutical research productivity are overstated. 

In Chapter 3, William Comanor has pointed out that pharmaceutical firms in the United States have spent a large share of their research and development expenditures on finding new indications for existing drugs. Berndt, Cockburn, and Grepin (2000) describe the effort for finding new indications as an incremental innovation. 

The former example is a radical innovation, not only because it allowed significant changes in message reminders and adhesives, but also because it was completely unexpected. The diversification of Post-It notes into different sizes and colors is an example of incremental innovation, which involves step-by-step changes and improvements to existing products or processes. Radical innovations are far less common, though their effects are farther reaching over both society and history. 

Opportunity involves both supply-side and demand-side factors. On the supply side, technological gaps can exist (1) between the technology used in a particular firm and the already-available technology that could be adopted or adapted (known as diffusion or incremental innovation, respectively), and (2) the technology used in a particular firm and technology that could be developed (i.e., major or radical innovation). On the demand side, four factors could push firms towards technological... 

We are now in a cycle characterized by incremental innovation, not therapeutic breakthroughs, and it is reasonable for industry critics to question the industry on the value of its innovations. A wave of patent expiries, high failure rates of developmental products, pressure to reduce or contain healthcare inflation (prices and expenditures), and access to essential medicines in developing countries have resulted in a global environment of increasing hostility. At this point it is difficult to predict the direction in which the environment will move over the next three to five years. 

Michael Schrage Absolutely, but in both of those contexts the convergence of allocation of overhead is present. Given a portfolio and a particular perception, we want to charge a certain amount to overhead rather than another amount. If the portfolio is put in the incremental innovation category, we do a different overhead formulation than if it is pioneering research. 

Incremental innovation. This is a natural part of the continuous improvement process in corporations - traditional product development efforts leading from one product to its next generation. Here we can cite various specialty chemicals, such as de-watering agents, coating materials, or colorants whose product characteristics such as stabihty, color, and solubihty can be improved by further modification of the existing molecule or by mixing different substances. 

For example, pharmaceutical companies spend between 10 and 20 percent of their total sales on R D chemical companies often spend less than 5 percent. As incremental innovations have much less impact, they provide poor fuel for corporate growth. This is supported by the fact that there appears to be no correlation between chemical companies R D spend and increases in sales (Fig. 9.1). 

The extent to which you can complete the innovation financial management documents early in the project depends on the level of innovation you hope to achieve. During incremental innovation, your initial ratio of knowledge to assumptions (Exhibit 11.1) will be higher than for substantial or breakthrough innovation. In either case, you should update the relevant financial documents, as well as the Project Charter, as you uncover new data throughout the project. 

Some examples of incremental innovation include improving the checkin process at a hotel or airline, or implementing an employee idea-solicitation program. A substantial innovation might be replacing an electric toothbrush with one that uses sound waves, or allowing consumers to purchase their own plane tickets online. You still need to brush your teeth and get a plane ticket, but the means by which you do this materially change. 

Primarily Cost Savings through Incremental Innovation... 

Innovation comes to both assembled and nonassembled products in one of two ways. The innovation can be radical, offering a major departure from current practice and a discontinuous leap in some aspect of performance. Or it can be incremental, a series of small improvements, often undocumented, that accumulate to large gains. Incremental innovation underlies the continuous improvement made famous by Japanese manufacturers or the learning curve well known around the world. 

Most radical innovations start in niche markets, communities of economic interest where the new technology solves some deeply felt problem. This is necessary because new technologies often serve customers poorly along the performance dimensions of value in mainstream markets. Radical innovations make the transition to the mainstream only after establishing a strong base in the niche. Mainstream businesses often find little of interest in these niches because they are too small or because they offer profit margins that are too narrow. Hence, niche markets are often left to the entrepreneurial venture. By contrast, incremental innovations usually fit well into mainstream markets, and market incumbents tend to develop and employ them better. 

Intellectual capital must be recognized as the only viable property in the Knowledge Age. In this fast-paced era, the only competitive advantage — the only source of profitability and productivity any organization has — comes from robust, incremental innovations from individuals, both inside companies and in their partner organizations. 

The payoffs for established firms in a line of business may be quite different from those for new entrants, either new enterprises or new ventures of existing corporations. The traditional firms may see the new technology as essentially capital destructive. Using purely short term economic criteria, they may reasonably choose a sequence of incremental innovations to improve the old technology over withdrawal and investment in the new until the point at which they go bankrupt. Indeed, it is difficult to clearly see the threat from the new technology at... 

The most basic lean tool is the Continuous Improvement (Cl) process. Bessant and Francis (1999) defined Cl as an organizational process of focused and sustained incremental innovation. The Cl process is dynamic, having cycles of implementation imposed by different forces and assuming different patterns (Savolainen, 1999). In order to have this dynamic capability, the company needs people (employees, administrators, management) prepared to assume a kind of attitude reflected in the 4Ps of the TPS. 

Our perspective will be illustrated by a case from the Norwegian railway system more specifically the Aasta accident in 2001. We start the discussion with a presentation of our analytical model. Thereafter follows a brief presentation and discussion of the case, before we conclude that incremental innovations in complex technological systems may encompass even greater risks than radical changes of the entire system. 

It is important to underline that the following case does not tend to be an explanation of why the accident actually happened, but an illustration of the relationship between incremental innovations and risk. 

---