Abstract
Management of innovation risks is central issue on the minds of new product development managers. A reader may recall from the innovation system as presented in Chap. 2 that the delays involved with developing capabilities and delays in executing projects that use these capabilities are major drivers in the complexity of the innovation system. The fact that innovation workers build their capabilities by executing projects only complicates this picture. In short, a key source of complexity of the innovation system is due to the feedback loops that exist between these capabilities and the associated projects required to develop them. While much complexity (and potential for creating harmful innovation butterflies) will remain no matter what the innovation executive and her staff do, things will improve if roadmaps can be made more robust; that is, if the planners can somehow reduce the chances of a roadmap going awry and requiring adjustment or wholesale redesign. If this can be done, the predictability of the innovation system—at least in the short run—will improve, thus reducing the “fog” inherent in innovation systems and enabling the firm to execute the Scout–Roadmap–Orchestrate–Maneuver (SROM) cycle—a crucial underpinning of maneuver-driven competition—at a quicker tempo.
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Notes
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Figure created with Microsoft PowerPoint and used with the permission of Microsoft.
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Figure created with Microsoft PowerPoint and used with the permission of Microsoft.
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Anderson, E.G., Joglekar, N.R. (2012). Modularizing Portfolio Risk. In: The Innovation Butterfly. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3131-2_6
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