Week 11 Reading Reflection

This article was very interesting and I think very helpful if you are someone always trying to think outside of your box. I loves how the author had a running story throughout the article on the evolution of glass. It pretty amazing how it went from being used by Thomas Edison for light bulbs all the way to gorilla glass. Either way, one of the main points I wanted to hit from this article is how companies can just trap them self’s in a viscous unproductive innovation cycle. The author mentioned he worked for a contact lance company who decided to innovate and re-amp what there company focus was. After some time senior management review the R&D files and came to the conclusion that they have gotten nowhere and just wasted money. What’s important to realize is that innovation has to be value creating and value adding to customers. But how do you do that? Well the author also went into some details on the topic. He goes on to say that a product is creating value is is does something for the social wellbeing or it if saves the customer money and I thought that was clever. What I though the biggest take away here was “Choosing what kind of value your innovation will create and then sticking to that is critical, because the capabilities required for each are quite different and take time to accumulate.” Its just like going into the stock market. Sometimes you just got to stick with it till it becomes profitable, even if times get bad. I feel like a lot of companies could and would be up to some innovating revolutionary products but they give up them to quickly.