Cultural innovation : the secret to building breakthrough businesses / Douglas Holt

Companies struggle with innovation because they put all their chips on one innovation paradigm--what Holt calls "better mousetraps." This is innovation as conceived by engineers and economists--a race to create the killer value proposition. It wins on functionality, convenience, reliability, price, or user experience. Fortunately, building better mousetraps is not the only way to innovate. In consumer markets, innovation often proceeds according to a logic Holt calls "cultural innovation." Better-mousetraps innovation is organized by quantitative ambitions: Outdo your competitors on existing notions of value. Cultural innovation operates according to qualitative ambitions: Change the understanding of what is considered valuable. Holt's research and consulting reveal the strategic principles that allow companies to pursue cultural innovation. In this article he explores those principles using the stories of how the Ford Explorer reinvented the family car and how Blue Buffalo reinvented the ideology of dog food.

Business.