The Forbes magazine published an interesting list called “Top 10 Disrupters of 2006”. Bear in mind that the entries on the list can not necessarily be classified as disruptive innovations according to Clayton Christense’s traditional term (despite the fact that Christensen was among the panelists who voted for the list). They are rather breakthrough ideas and initiatives that had an impact upon the economic or social landscape in 2006. According to the article “our disrupters aren’t just companies who played the game and won; they are people or technologies that changed the game completely.”

A couple of weeks ago I announced that Chuck Frey was collecting “innovation lessons learned in 2006”. The Innovation Tools website already published the result, with almost 60 answers. Below you will find the most interesting ones (in my opinion):

If necessity is the mother of invention can we say that ambition is the mother of innovation? The most famous inventions that our society witnessed appeared as solutions for specific problems. The train appeared when the chariots were no longer suitable for covering long distance travels. The telephone was developed as soon as people started living scattered across the country. When the steam engine was no longer able to sustain the growing necessity for energy man came up the explosion engine based on fossil fuels.

Clayton Christensen just published an interesting article over Forbes magazine titled “An Innovation Home Run”. According to Christensen the major innovation is coming from the deeper connection that clubs are building with their core baseball consumers.

Wal-Mart recently started selling generic prescription drugs over its stores for $4. It is already covering 38 states throughout the United States and its portfolio includes more than 300 prescription drugs. The question that arises is: does this move from the giant retailer represent a disruptive innovation to traditional pharmacies?

New ideas are certainly the currency of the new economy, and they are also the fuel for most innovations. Despite that importance, though, many people still associate the generation of ideas with a lone genius, sitting on his desk and coming up with new things from scratch.

The open innovation approach, that is going beyond the corporate internal R&D for new ideas or products, seems to be gaining traction lately.

Some time ago on the article “7 Ways to Unlock Innovation” I had already defended the idea that companies must go beyond simple product innovations. BusinessWeek just published an article covering that topic.