That is the title of an article written by Graham Warwick that appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. In it Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) Chairman and CEO Bill Swanson talks about disruptive and sustaining (incremental) technology innovation. Among other things he said:
“You want an organization where that’s cultivated, but no one side suffers at the expense of the other. I have watched organizations take away resources from the incremental innovation teams to fund those that are disruptive. What you can create are haves and have-not's and that is one way to destroy innovation. You need both.”
Spot on! I too have seen organizations pouring resources on disruptive half-baked ideas at the expense of upgrade releases that actually pay the bills. A good balance is needed.
Frequently these half-baked ideas generate a lot of excitement (possibly rightly so), they become part of the near term product roadmap, and counted on for millions of $ of revenue promised to stakeholders and shareholders. The problem is that more often than not there is no straight path between a widget with blinking lights that some wizard hacked together to address basic usage on a bench and an actual product that works properly per customer requirements (complete with proper HW, SW, safety, documentation, production testing, etc.) Program delays, resource crunch, added costs, etc ensue.
The end result is that the company hurts, the employee morale suffers, and over time upper management loses every bit of credibility. Of course, the mess could be avoided if the people that are selling the disruptive technology up were in touch with reality or if the people that are pushing down to get things out faster knew the difference between feasibility and productization.
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