New Fourth Generation of Innovation Management Theory & Practice: Part 2

Abstract

This is the second article in a pair of articles in the Journal of Creating Value which identified the root cause of a group of wicked global problems as the lack of value creation from radical innovation. The root cause has existed over the last four decades following the large number of significant radical innovations that launched and initially propelled the Information Age. The first article described the essential part of a solution which is adoption of a new fourth generation of innovation management (4G) which has emerged as best practice since 2000 because 4G effectively enables radical innovation in addition to more effective and efficient incremental innovation.

Radical innovation is required for sustained, adequate rates of economic growth driven by improvements in productivity, quality and cost in industries such as healthcare, education, construction and energy. As a result of inadequate radical innovation over the past four decades, a group of major economic, social and environmental wicked problems are unsolved such as income inequality and global warming and these problems exist in all countries including the United States.

4G is guided by 12 new principles and practices to effectively and efficiently create radical innovation based on new dominant designs while also improving the efficient creation of incremental innovation. The first article, Part 1, described the first four principles of 4G in detail. This article, Part 2, describes the remaining eight principles of 4G in detail.