The Other Side of Innovation Quotes

“The aspiring leader has been set up to fail. He just doesn’t recognize it yet. The first few months go well, but reality soon sets in. It is not easy for one person to create change in a large corporation. After one year, the leader feels as though he is trying to make innovation happen inside an organization that is, in every way, determined to fight his every move. The general manager of the company’s largest product line is anxious about the possibility that the innovation will cannibalize him. Marketing is uncooperative, worried about possible damage to the company’s brand if the new product fails. Manufacturing is upset that it has to schedule small, inefficient runs for the new product. Salespeople are reluctant to push a product without a track record. Human resources is unwilling to waive compensation rules to hire a few experts that the project badly needs. Finance is concerned about margin dilution. Information technology claims that the project is too small to warrant exceptions to standard systems and processes.”
― Vijay Govindarajan, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge

“the innovator’s job cannot be to deliver a proven result; it must be to discover what is possible, that is, to learn, by converting assumptions into knowledge as quickly and inexpensively as possible.”
― Vijay Govindarajan, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge

“It is not. The aspiring leader has been set up to fail. He just doesn't recognize it yet. The first few months go well, but reality soon sets in. It is not easy for one person to create change in a large corporation. After one year, the leader feels though he is trying to make innovation happen inside an organization that is, in every way, determined to fight his every move.”
― Chris Trimble, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge (Harvard Business Review

“Organizations are not designed for innovation. Quite the contrary, they are designed for ongoing operations.”
― Vijay Govindarajan, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge (Harvard Business Review