| Innovation in industry is a process that involves an enormous amount of uncertainty, human creativity, and chance. It takes place in small and large ways, and in some times and some places more than in others. Over the years, scholars have observed patterns of successful industrial innovation, but the identification of patterns does not suggest that successful innovation is entirely predictable. These patterns do, however, indicate that relationships exist between product and process changes, the state of evolution of an industry, and the competitive climate faced by individual firms. Understanding these relationships is crucial, both to the scholar, who seeks keys to the general behavior of firms and their abilities to innovate, and to the practicing manager, whose mission is to plan and act. |
| This book attempts to develop a practical model of the dynamics of industrial innovationa model with explanatory power for the scholar, and action ideas for the manager. Clearly, this model will not be generalizable to all settings, industries, cultures, and times. Like all attempts to explain behavior, it is a creature of its sources, which in this case are the American industrial experience of the past 150 years, with a smattering of evidence from Europe and Japan. It also draws primarily on products for which cost and product performance are the commanding factors, rather than those for which fashion, novelty, or advertising are important competitive variables. Within these limits, however, it should be readily apparent to the reader that innovation is conditioned by a firm's |
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