Innovation by Imitation: Using an "Adopt-Transform-Apply" Methodology Coupled with Pattern Recognition to Enhance Firm Innovation

Executives from across all industries have sought the holy grail of innovation productivity improvements at their organizations. We are advocating a process of innovation by imitation where managers and staff in organizations are taught to look at advances in other industries and see how those processes or innovations may be emulated in their own industry. We term the emulation process "adopt-transform-apply" to represent the actual adopting of the innovative idea from another industry, transforming and adapting it to the current circumstances and applying and execution of the transformed idea. There are numerous instances in history that shows that this is a very profitable activity, and that a great deal of innovation occurs this way, and thus is a natural process in problem solving. We are proposing to use this process to improve the innovation capacity and performance of firms by educating their managers and staff on the technique. This process has become the basis for the activity of an Institute for Business Innovation where industry groups meet regularly to share innovations and practice the adopt-transform-apply technique to the benefit of the Institute\´s constituents.