William C. Miller's blog

I recently attended the “Open Innovation 2016” conference put on by the Marcus Evans group. Open innovation refers to people collaborating and partnering with others outside of their organization to cultivate innovative solutions to various opportunities and challenges, such as new product development, quality and marketing.

Organizations around the world, from universities to non-profits to corporations, are branding themselves as innovative leaders. Search Google for “innovation” and you’ll find 516,000,000 entries. Search Amazon books and you’ll find over 115,000 books with “innovation” in the title.

I was speaking with a colleague whose client was preparing a proposal for an innovative initiative, to present to their company’s executive committee. At one point, we talked about where the resistance might come from – not based on the content of the proposal, but based on the kind of innovative thinking behind the content.

Just before the turn of the new millennium, I wrote the following opening lines to my 3^rd book, Flash of Brilliance:

Disruptive technologies by themselves are often not enough to cause a market disruption. But a set of innovations across many domains can weigh mightily on the future of an industry.