Geoffrey Moore on innovation

Last week, Farhang in our Architecture group arranged for Geoffrey Moore, bestselling author of Crossing the Chasm, to come speak to our Platform & Innovation team.

His talk, Dealing with Darwin, focused on the nature of innovative ideas, and how today’s leading companies are able to leverage innovation to compete successfully for revenues and profits in a globalized, commoditized, and deregulated marketplace.

I found it interesting to walk through with him how companies can free up existing resources claimed by supporting core assets, or context, and then re-deploy them towards growth and innovation projects. Geoff termed this freeing up "coins in the couch", or claimed resources, by commoditizing the processes supporting context as much as possible. Resources for innovation in companies can often get "politically claimed", in other words trapped in the comfy couch.

Another key point is that there are different types of innovation - operational excellence, process, disruptive, line extension, platform - they key is to focus on how each of these areas help differentiate and separate growth opportunities from the gravitational pull of commoditization.

Geoffrey was an entertaining speaker, and I really enjoyed meeting him since I had read Crossing the Chasm a few years ago. Do pick up his new book, Dealing With Darwin, if you get a chance.