The Future of Innovation Management

Abstract

Our final chapter is clearly a difficult one to complete as editors of this volume. Everything we know about industrial innovation tells us that predicting the future is usually an invitation to ridicule. Areas popularly slated for draconian change seem to hang on with amazing stability, while revolutionary developments seem to originate in entirely unforeseen places and send powerful shock waves through the economies of the world. The uncertainty is at times so great that we could seriously question whether it is even wise in this field to attempt to learn from the past or to make it the basis for predicting the future. It can be argued that it is more reliable to break completely away from old assumptions and view the future in new ways.