The innovation paradox: reconciling creativity & discipline how winning organizations combine inspiration with perspiration

There is a fundamental paradox related to innovation. As global competition becomes fiercer, growing importance attaches to the ability to bring to market innovative new products and services sharply differentiated from their competitors. Yet innovation is becoming more and more difficult. Companies with sufficient scale and scope to market new products globally find that their very size inhibits the creativity needed to invent such products. The growing complexity of new technologies means that innovation often requires large teams. [An early Intel microprocessor was designed by a handful of engineers; the Centrino required several hundred.] Yet creativity seems to flourish best among empowered individuals working in small units and in entrepreneurial settings. How do successful innovators reconcile the scale, discipline and operational excellence ["perspiration"] that marketplace success demands, with the freedom, openness and even chaos ["inspiration"] within which creativity and ideation flourish? In our research, we identified five different models, or templates, for reconciling inspiration and perspiration. We provide short case studies of each template, as aids for organizations that seek to build an innovation system that fits their culture, history and personality.