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Since the late 1990s, technology markets
have declined dramatically. Responding to the changing business
climate, companies use strategies of open innovation: acquiring
technologies from outside, marketing their technologies
to other companies, and outsourcing manufacturing. But open
innovation is not enough; it is mainly a way to run a business
to its endgame. By itself, open innovation results in razor-thin
profits from products that compete as commodities. Businesses
also need a path to renewal. No one ever achieved a breakthrough
with open innovation.
A breakthrough creates something new or
satisfies a previously undiscovered need. Radical breakthroughs
often have uses and effects far beyond what their inventors
had in mind. Breakthroughs can launch new industries or
transform existing ones. Our capacity for creating breakthroughs
depends on a combination of science, imagination, and business;
the next great waves of innovation will come from organizations
that get this combination right.
During periods of rapid economic growth,
companies and investors focus on the short term and forget
where breakthroughs come from. Without appropriate engagement
and reinvestment, the innovation ecology breaks down. Today,
universities, technology companies, government funding agencies,
venture capitalists, and corporate research laboratories
need to foster the conditions in which breakthroughs arise.
In Breakthrough Mark and Barbara
Stefik show us how innovation works. Drawing on stories
from repeat inventors and managers of technology, they uncover
the best practices for inventing the future. This book is
for readers who want to know how inventors do their work,
how people become inventors, and how businesses can create
powerful cultures of innovation.
Mark Stefik is an inventor and Research
Fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he
directs the Information Sciences and Technologies Laboratory.
Barbara Stefik has a doctorate in transpersonal psychology.
She is in private practice and helps people to overcome
creative blocks.
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