Innovation process

I was recently reading up on project management and came across this interesting post by Dave Garrett in which he argues that innovation should follow Whirlpool's example, using the innovation pyramid that Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter talks about in this interview. For us at Grow Smarter, the base of the pyramid (Product Replacement) happens almost daily, as we improve functionality to PremiereVision. The second tier (Marketable Innovation) requires a bit more effort as we add features following our users' suggestions. The third and fourth tier (New Products and New Business) is something we're also actively involved in - our recent development of a Grape Exchange for the Napa Valley Grapegrowers falls into this category as does some work we're doing with friends from California and Australia. Based on some of the kinds of insight that Dave Garrett highlights, we're rearranging our activities to follow a more top-down approach (as projected in the innovation pyramid, of course). Our New Business vision will help us assign resources to New Products development and Marketable Innovations, which, in turn, will help us better focus our efforts in the Product Replacement. I can hardly wait to have this conversation with our Zen viticulturist...