Your innovation introduction - it has become a necessity for sustainability

Innovation is creating a meaningful and unique product or service (Doug Hall, Driving Eureka). 

There are two basic types of businesses, traditional and venture businesses. Traditional business competes in a known market with known products, while venture businesses create new markets with new products. Both, traditional and venture businesses can innovate.

Innovation has two basic approaches, product focused or customer focused. Innovation happens in three areas, the business model, strategy, and profit levers. However, true innovation is careful not to get drawn into the good idea drain. 

A lack of innovation is the single largest reason existing organizations decline (Peter Drucker)

A product focused approach to innovation is the more traditional approach where experts and/or researchers develop a final product based on their experience and/or research, then start selling it and adjust it in the future, based on customer feedback. An example where this is often used is the medical industry. Apple also seems to do a good job with this approach, since they set a high value on quality, simplicity, and privacy. Sometimes the customer doesn't know what they want until you show it to them (Steve Jobs). 

 A customer focused approach to innovation is a more recent approach that became what is known as the lean startup model. This began, in my humble opinion, by Steve Blank, author of The Startup Manual. This approach develops a minimum viable product to test assumptions with potential customers in order to further develop the product later, after you have discovered and validated real customers. There are no facts inside your building, so get out and talk with customers (Steve Blank). 

There are many books written by experts about what strategy is, the following is my thought on strategy.

• Personas (customer segments - who)
• Primary problems (of customer segments - what)
• Position (logical advantage - how)
• Personality (emotional brand including a purpose - why)
• Preservation (customer service/retention - where and when)

The most important for of discipline for sustained results is a fanatical adherence to the strategic concept of what you are deeply passionate about, what drives your economic engine, and what you can be the best at (Jim Collins, Good to Great). 

The Startup Owner's Manual by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Driving Eureka by Doug Hall 

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Testing Business Ideas by David Bland and Alex Osterwalder

Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet

Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen

The Innovator's Mindset by George Couros

• Very few people take unorthodox ideas seriously today, and the mainstream sees that as a sign of progress. We can be glad that there are fewer crazy cults now, yet that gain has come at great cost: we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets yet to be discovered... The actual truth is that there are many more secrets left to find, but they will yield only to relentless searchers (Peter Thiel with Blake Masters, Zero to One).  
• The only sustainable solution to the accelerated pace of change is to create a culture of innovation. Innovation creates something meaningful and unique, and can be a product or a process, and innovation should be everyone's responsibility (Doug Hall, Driving Eureka).
• Our job as leaders is not to control others but to bring out the best in them... Characteristics of an innovative leader include; vision, empathy, models learning, risk-taking, networked, observant, and a team builder who is always focused on relationships (George Course, The Innovator's Mind). 
• We must be committed to constant improvement, experimentation, and innovation in every initiative, and we will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations (Jeff Bezos). 
• Competition should not occupy the center of strategic thinking... Industry structure is not given; it can be shaped; Strategic creativity can be unlocked systematically (W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy). 
• Problems show up in business through systems about 94 percent of the time, and through people about six percent of the time (W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis). 
• Rigorously measure, confront hard truths, and create experiments to learn how to move numbers closer to the plan (Eric Ries, The Lean Startup).
• The real reason why MIT is so successful at creating new companies is a combination of spirit and skills. At MIT there is a culture that encourages people to start companies all the time... More important than being charismatic, entrepreneurs need to be effective communicators, recruiters, and salespeople (Bill Aulet, Disciplined Entrepreneurship). 
• Historian Will Durant studied world history over four decades and concluded history is shaped more by demanding situations than by great men (Benjamin Hardy, Willpower Doesn't Work). 
• In 2018 more than 75% of US venture capital for business innovation went to just three states... There are principles that can help communities develop an environment that nurtures business innovation (Brad Feld, Startup Communities).