Vigilant Innovation

Book excerpt: Drawing on over a hundred years of research into innovation and an in depth research study, the book brings to life the reality of managing established firms to secure advantage through vigilant innovation approaches in disrupting digital era markets. Exploring how organizations manage new offering development focused innovation across a portfolio of core, adjacent and breakthrough environments, the focus is on the search and select phases of the innovation process, and how established firms identify and validate a range of opportunities. Companies face the paradox of how to establish search and select processes for focal markets, while also setting up routines to sense and respond to disruptive innovation signals from adjacent and more peripheral markets. The book builds on research into peripheral vision, and considers how organizations manage the crucial early stages of a vigilant innovation process. The research project at the heart of the book focused on 10 case companies in the publishing sector. The new frameworks developed by the author were informed by over 60 interviews, the innovation literature and the author’s experience as a researcher, consultant and practitioner.