Is The US Done Innovating?

from the no-more-for-us,-thanks... dept

Here's a somewhat surprising study suggesting that US companies don't innovate any more. The survey found that executives are worried about being out-innovated, but aren't doing much to encourage innovation within their own companies. The details (damn those details) suggest it's not quite that simple however. It really depends on how you define "innovation." Part of the problem is the assumption that innovation means something entirely new. That's really invention, not innovation. Innovation is often about taking something and modifying it to make it better -- whether that modification is technology, business model or just plain old marketing. From the sound of the survey, that's exactly what companies are doing. They're looking at existing offerings and figuring out ways to innovate around them. Of course, that is risky -- because it leads to companies trying to protect obsolete business models, and not recognize true threats, but innovation is still happening. This is actually pretty typical for larger companies. Really new business models and concepts often come out of startups -- and there's plenty of innovation happening in startups all across the US right now. Some of it will get snapped up by those large companies, some of it will get copied and some of it will be ignored. However, to say that innovation isn't happening is missing what's really happening.