Time Value of Innovation

Roughly, there are two stages to innovation; namely, research and development, followed by practical application or implementation. At Too Late, Somebody is Already Doing that, we hope to provoke and encourage those in the first camp to out invent the competition by bringing new ideas to fruition faster and motivate those in the latter camp to take action by putting these innovations to practical new uses that generate revenue.

Doing either or both of these things can contribute to maximizing the Time Value of Innovation. Those who "get it" about new technologies and who apply them to solve pressing problems first can realize significant and valuable return on investment. Those who fail to see the obvious can suffer catastrophic loss.

By way of illustration, at the inaugural Seattle Innovation Symposium held in September 2005, David Croson, PhD and associate professor at Southern Methodist University, shared an interesting anecdote that recounted the way that assassinated U.S. President William McKinley died, at the 1901 World's Fair. Just ten feet away from the place where McKinley's fate was determined, lay a fully operational new technology that might have saved his life: the x-ray machine. At the 1901 World's Fair, the pinnacle event for the future of applied technologies, a team of the best and brightest were frantically trying to find the second of two bullets lodged inside the declining President; and yet, apparently nobody thought to suggest, "hey, roll that new x-ray picture taker thingie over here STAT and see if we can find the other bullet! This is the President of the United States and if we don't try something, he will certainly die!"

Notwithstanding modal global sentiment about U.S. presidents in 2001 versus 1901, the early 20th century surgeons stitched him up and sent him back to Washington, where he died shortly thereafter.

What opportunities, laying just within reach, are your businesses or business units missing out on? Are you a VP or CEO lying on the table with two bullets buried in your business case and surrounded by a bright but overly risk-averse or unimaginative team that is missing the intuitively obvious?

Whether you are a new startup, or an old standard striving to keep the pace of innovation set by nimble new entrants, Product and Process Management for Innovators might start you down the road toward a sustainable model for applied innovation, or even save your assets before it's too late.

too.late