You’re probably already familiar with the Innovation Curve, that popular bell curve diagram that separates “Innovators” and “Early Adopters” from the “Early Majority,” the “Late Majority” and the “Laggards.” One has to assume the Dinosaurs follow somewhere behind them.
Now in today’s global business climate, nearly everyone is talking about innovation.
The truth is that everyone wants to innovate, or at least wants to reap the benefits of innovating, even if their leaders or organizational cultures are actually incapable of change as they stand today.
Conventional business wisdom suggests that only about 3 percent of organizations have what it takes to innovate. That is, they’ve been able to mobilize the right resources – financial, structural and human – to pursue something bold, or something that creates a new reality for an entire industry or operating space within today’s global markets.
If you’re a visionary early adopter, you’ve likely done your homework, invested to pursue new opportunities, and taken on some level of risk to achieve what’s next for your business. The payoff for these early adopters is quite often significant.
Even for the later-arriving early majority, there are competitive advantages and economies of scale to be realized.
For the late majority and, finally, the laggards, there is nothing more than a well-trod path to the next iteration of their business models. In fact, as these folks follow others’ lead, the innovators are likely already advancing their next business discovery investments.
Invariably, the question of innovation comes down to this: Where are you on the innovation curve? Are you leading, probing, exploring, learning and changing?
These are questions we ask ourselves all the time. We’ve learned there is as much risk in being a laggard as there is in being an innovator. So why not go for broke? Why not push the boundaries of what we know and use and rely on today in order to create something that’s intuitive, reliable and even inviting?
That’s what we’ve done with our Invenias executive search software. And it’s what we continue to do as we engage with leading-edge search firms and corporate talent teams that want to get more from their teams, and more profits from their businesses.