One of the most important keys to creating successful new products and services is finding a balance between invention and innovation. And this can best be found by making sure creative minds aren’t just coming up with cool ideas, but also by teaming up with strategists and business executives to understand their markets. So write Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and James Milway, until recently executive director of the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity and the Martin Prosperity Institute at Rotman.
These are their conclusions in the recently published article “User-Driven Innovation: Putting an End to Inventing in the Dark,” which appears in the Fall 2012 issue of Rotman magazine. (The piece is not available for free online, but can be downloaded for a fee here.) Martin and Milway argue that companies need to also clearly understand the difference between “innovation” and “invention,” which the authors describe as two discrete concepts...
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