Innovation IV: Why Successful Small Companies must get Big to stay Innovative
Small companies, with limited resources and thinner talent pools, face challenges in sustaining multiple lines of inquiry without compromising operational quality.
Small, successful, companies that don't have plans to get big are more likely to run afoul of the Innovator's Dilemma and wake up to find themselves hopelessly behind a more aggressive competitor, without the resource cushion to regroup.
Bigger companies, by their nature, attract abundant talent, are used to working at scale (big problems), and have global reach. This "smart-scale-reach triad" (http://bit.ly/1g9LbAU), while not an innoculation against the Innovator's Dilemma, still gives bigger companies a better chance of correcting course once mistakes are recognised -- often when serious competition emerges.
Can we generalise? Despite efforts to provide fertile ground for disruptive innovations, incubating that first disruption is often easier in a smaller company. But continuing disruptive innovations after a first success, difficult in the best of companies, is all but impossible for small ones that choose to stay small.
Routine innovators and routine servers are good at their job and they do their job. Creative innovators and creative servers are good at their job, but they understand their jobs, but they have a broader understanding of the context of their job and produce above and beyond the specific requirements of their jobs. It is the creative innovators and the creative servers that provide the advantages that create success. It is these successes that build on each other and (in the past) have provided the change and advances that put countries (and companies) ahead of their competitors. (paraphrased) Change will happen, and the question is will you drive that change or will the change happen to you?