The Supreme Court of the USA recently initiated a law change that has made patenting of new technologies much more difficult. This has particularly hit some technology families such as cloud services, location based services, machine learning and Big Data. Some ways however have been found out through which companies can continue developing high technology products without compromise. Business innovation must now take place between silos where white spaces are constantly available. Innovations must also take place on absolute top end scientific devices, which are yet beyond the court’s purview as such things haven’t been discovered yet. Parts of a device can be innovated independently, thus avoiding the Alice Rule as this new law has been nicknamed. The overall R & D strategy needs to focus on the greater intellectual property and not only company benefits. The GPS for example that is so helpful to drivers will always escape the purview as that has broader implications for societal benefits.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallphelps/2015/12/15/the-mother-of-all-innovation-challenges/

Business innovation has traditionally been considered for physical products but now the trend is shifting towards services and solutions. Companies are ramping up their R & D efforts in order to develop best service offerings. This has even extended to traditional heavy manufacturers as they are also looking up to improve their final solutions to customers. IT giants such as Apple and Google have also stepped in to this field providing their expertise towards R & D at automobile companies. Luxury cars especially are now integrating several new features such as microprocessors and a dashboard instead of switches or keys.Management consulting firm PwC speaks about how challenges have increased multifold for these organizations in the digital age. All this investment may eventually pave the way for the dream of self-driving cars. 

Sourcehttp://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Innovation-Shifts-from-Products-to-Solutions?rssid=all_updates&gko=08156&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StrategyBusiness-AllUpdatesFullPics+%28strategy%2Bbusiness+-+All+Updates+%28Image%2FSyndication%29%29

3M is considered one of the global leaders in terms of level of business innovation. Each product line of theirs reflects some sense of creativity. The word collaboration has become something of a buzzword in business cycles, yet 3M was practicing this long before it became a fad. Being an IT company, the organization structure was always built like a matrix, enabling perfect intra organizational communication. Sustainability is one thing where one of its directors – Michele Whyle – is particularly fanatic about. She cites the example of recycling not taking place enough in the USA, but how one of 3M’s initiatives is going to rectify that. She speaks about how in Mumbai the challenges are different due to the over-crowding. Workforce diversity is another thing 3M is working on and for this initiative it is in the process of encouraging more and more girls to take up science at high school level.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2016/03/31/how-3m-drives-innovation-through-empathy-and-collaboration/#587c4b403aaf

A study concluded recently that the success of business innovation depends on the level of depth to its idea multiplied by the level of initiative taken. Established firms hold some advantage most notably recall value among customers. However, in some ways startups have an advantage as they have the momentum of growth with them. New initiatives are more likely to emerge from startups. Also excessive funding in the initial period can be rather harmful for such organizations as the seed fund must be built up over a period of time. Any disruptive business idea or model takes time to fortify inside customers’ minds. Whether it is startups or established brands, product to market fit is a basic essential.

Source: http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2016/04/22/innovation-force-innovation-mass-x-acceleration/

Amazon has been a giant in its online shopping industry for long now, yet its foray into creation of a unique hardware device has taken a lot of effort. The Echo product has always been backed to the hilt by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, but the product languished within the lab for years until it emerged as another ground breaking business innovation from the company’s stables. Echo’s model is based around a voice recognition system which prompts the virtual assistant named Alexa to perform household tasks. Its response time to voice recognition is now noticeably less than Apple’s Siri Microsoft’s Kinect or Google’s Voice Search. Amazon believes that voice is going to be the next big thing and thus has invested right on time.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.in/The-inside-story-of-how-Amazon-created-Echo-the-next-billion-dollar-business-no-one-saw-coming/articleshow/51664080.cms

Just as the Periodic Table charts various elements found naturally, similarly a table has been developed which tabulates components to achieve disruptive business innovation. Along the Y axis, listed are organizational processes such as products, services, process or machine learning. List along the Y axis are methods to gauge them such as concept, transfer, production, research and usage. Each innovation aimed at disruption maybe measured against this matrix. More cells being filled is a sign of stability in the plan. Unsurprisingly, the internet is marked extremely high figures. This matrix can be used for due diligence measures by investment bodies before funding is provided to any startup.

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/archive/2015/07/26/35-elements-to-disruptive-innovation.aspx

In order to excel at business innovation, no one particular approach exists. Different organizations have attained similar leadership levels by following widely different methods. Apple for instance disrupted the world completely as its products redefined categories altogether. However, Apple does not believe in having a separate research and innovation department. IBM and Google on the other hand have research labs which are key to their successes over decades or centuries. Henry Ford was himself an iconoclast who believed that innovations must emerge from the entrepreneurs and not from the customers who do not yet know of a future. Science has made enormous progress in fields such as robotics, genomics and nanotechnology. Thus every organization has to be careful to identify the problems that exist. Also they must strive to be best placed themselves in order to solve these problems once identified. Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2016/05/06/there-is-no-one-true-path-to-innovation/#62fedb3f5754