The Enemy is the Mindset

The expression managerial mindset is often used in the business world to describe the set of assumptions and hidden norms that govern the behavior of managers. Bear in mind, however, that mindsets or paradigms have a much broader meaning. Every society, organization or geographic region carry its own set of assumptions and patterns; ruling how people communicate, interpret information, react to given situations, and so on.

Henderson – Clark Model

Henderson and Clark noticed that the Incremental – Radical dichotomy alone was not enough to explain what company would be in a better position to innovate and under what circumstances. They started wondering, for instance, why some incumbents would fail to catch something as straight-forward as some incremental innovations, just like Xerox failed to develop a small plain-paper copier even when it was the leader in xerography technology.

IBM’s view on Innovation

There are many interesting issues being explored, even if not all of them are necessarily novelties. The report mentions for example, confirming what we have already discussed here, that according to CEOs the main obstacle to innovation is the corporate culture.