In case you missed it, last month Business Week released their list of the Top 50 World’s Most Innovative Companies. Here are the top 20:
- Apple
- Toyota Motor
- General Electric
- Microsoft
- Tata Group
- Nintendo
- Procter & Gamble
- Sony
- Nokia
- Amazon.com
- IBM
- Research in Motion
- BMW
- Hewlett-Packard
- Honda Motor
- Walt Disney
- General Motors
- Reliance Industries
- Boeing
For the rest of the list, videos, articles and more, visit BusinessWeek.com. Among other things, you’ll find simple yet profound insights from guys like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who offered, “Constraints drive innovation.”
Do you agree with that statement? (I do.) Do you have any examples of when constraints generated an opportunity for innovation in your organization?
Netflix overcame a distribution constraint making on-line video rental feasible and competitive with bricks-and-mortar stores.
Google’s Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, talkas about how a small amount of constraint – whether in file size, pixels, or speed – fosters a lot of innovation.
http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1530
Great list! Major props to GE and Proctor & Gamble – two well established companies that find themselves among the top 10 most innovative companies – that’s impressive!!
The P&G model for innovation is quite instructive for legacy institutions. They refer to it as
connect and develop
They have been able to overcome a NOT INVENTED HERE syndrome, which so many intact organizations suffer from.
The lack of cash (or lack of desire to spend a lot of cash) as a constraint has always been a major driver of innovation. At my previous employer, we had a piece of equipment quoted at $250K. A couple of smart folks bought some off-the-shelf equipment and had a workable solution for < $40K.
If you have no constraints, you have no real world incentive to change anything; there’s nothing to drive you in a new direction.
What’s curious to me about the list is how most companies and their innovations are almost wholly reactionary innovations; *most* of these folks are being quite pro-active in their innovating practices, which is a lesson most churches fail to grasp.
I remember the church that I was pastoring at a couple of years ago. Our budgets were being cut, and I was overseeing community outreach and our ministry to the poor.
So I had to find new ways to being able to do outreach into the community. So we ended up doing outreach into the jail… we started some pretty cool ministry that did not cost us anything… and we had several people accept Christ… then when they got out of jail, they came to the church and got plugged into an adult Bible fellowship. We even had spouses of the inmates coming to church and getting baptized.
The constraint of no money forced us to come up with some innovative ministry opps that had some great results.
not so sure about GM?
[...] understanding of how to get their attention…something churches could do much better at. TONY MORGAN posted a list of these top companies. He also has a cool quote from Nintendo’s VP [...]