Peter Drucker on Systematic Innovation

I’m reading Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker and I’m simply fascinated by this book. I’d like to share an excerpt many of you might find interesting. See how his advice applies perfectly to our days of wasteful acquisitions, speculations about emerging “billion-dollar industries” and the like.

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Successful enterpreneurs do not wait until “the Muse kisses them” and gives them a “bright idea”; they go to work. Altogether, they do not look for the “biggie”, the innovation that will “revolutionize the industry,” create a “billion-dollar business,” or “make one rich overnight.” Those entrepreneurs who start out with the idea that they’ll make it big—and in a hurry—can be guaranteed failure. They are almost bound to do the wrong things. An innovation that looks very big may turn out to be nothing but technical virtuosity; and innovations with modest intellectual pretensions, a McDonald’s, for instance, may turn into gigantic, highly profitable businesses. The same applies to nonbusinesses, public-service innovations.

Successful entrepreneurs, whatever their individual motivation—be it money, power, curiosity, or the desire of fame and recognition—try to create value and to make a contribution. Still, successful entrepreneurs aim high. They are not content simply to improve on what already exists, or to modify it. They try to create new and different values and new and different satisfactions, to convert a “material” into a “resource,” or to combine existing resources in a new and more productive configuration.

And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for the economic or social innovation.

Hi,

I read this book, back in 1980's...at a young age it made a lasting impression on me. (I am replying to this post says it all). At that time i had thought i will do something which merits an entry in a list if there is ever one.

We have authored and published four books which are meant to teach the readers how to develop their own accounting and inventory software. Running this business for four years in a economy which is more suited to entreprenuership and not necessarily towards innovation, has been difficult in some aspects.

However, with lots of encouragement from strangers in US, and elsewhere, it has been possible to hang on!

Do we merit an entry. Not yet i feel. After all success is mostly measured in financial parameters.

i would have to agree. According my recent study, blue ocean strategy is a new way of running business as oppose to red ocean strategy. Red ocean strategy emphasize on beating their main competitors which result in competition oriented. However, blue ocean strategy focused on creating their own path without enphasize too much on competition. Blue ocean strategy quote that the real opportunity is to create uncontested market place. This is very similar to the innovator you mentioned.

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