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Strategic innovation competence is critical to business success in the world today. How to develop this competence is an even more critical issue facing businesses today. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

This paper explains how companies can solve these dilemmas as it explores relevant innovation theory and practice with several short case studies. Principles underlying the development of an innovation competence and an explanation of how companies can put these principles into practice to overcome the most common innovation challenges are also discussed.

The paper shows how ongoing, systematic innovation has become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage

This paper discusses how companies can put the principles of innovation and change into their business and make it work for them.

Disruptive innovation is particularly important during recovery periods, as companies need to win back customers with radically new value propositions. The purpose of this paper is to pull back all of the clutter and to present three critical lessons that companies must consider in their pursuit of disruptive innovation.

The lessons were extracted from systematic observations of successful and unsuccessful industry disruptors.

Three key lessons were uncovered: the ability to anticipate and act on market discontinuities and unmet customer needs, with a particular focus on the business model; The ability link incremental and breakthrough innovation efforts by focusing on a single, shared aspiration; and the recognition that disruptive innovation can inform strategy, just as strategy can (and should) inform disruptive innovation

These three lessons could help companies envision and commercialize disruptive innovation that dramatically reshape the competitive landscape of their industries.

This paper is targeted at companies seeking to offer dramatically new values to their customers and fundamentally alter the competitive balance of their industries. Envisioning and commercializing disruptive innovations is a means to this end. By applying the lessons learned from successful and not so successful innovators, companies have a better chance at winning.

For all the rhetoric – and hype – about open innovation, the reality is that few corporations have institutionalized open innovation practices in ways that have enabled substantial growth or industry leadership. This paper aims to explain how open innovation can achieve its potential in most companies.

Three cases of companies that practice various types of open innovation are discussed. The principles of establishing an organizational environment for open innovation are outlined.

The ability to move into and out of different industries by capitalizing on ideas and concepts from inside and outside the organization – open innovation – has tremendous value.

Without the appropriate mindset and, ultimately, operational structure in place, the promise of open innovation cannot be realized.

For corporate leaders, the paper identifies a key first step – to deliver on the promise of open innovation an organization must start by making the change from a competition‐focused, market‐share mindset to a competence‐based mindset.

While the open innovation concept proposed by Henry Chesbrough a decade ago has had some striking successes, the myriad options for engaging external partners can be daunting, so leaders need a guide for getting started that matches the needs of their firm. This paper aims to address this issue.

The paper identifies that innovation processes involve three stages during which the business model elements are conceived and elaborated: idea‐generation, idea‐development, and commercialization. The question for leaders is: “In which of the three stages could your growth efforts benefit from an infusion of external ideas and expertise?”

The open‐innovation approach does not require a company to replace all its current research and development (R&D) efforts. But it does change the primary question leaders should be asking to “How can my company create significantly more value by leveraging external partners to bring many more innovations to market?”

The article shows executives how they can systematically assess an innovation process, understand where new venture business models are weakest, and select the points at which open innovation could add some needed spark.

The article leads executives through two‐step process for introducing a customized open innovation program: step one, assess where your company's innovation process would benefit from external input by using five key questions; and step two, learn how to manage external relationships.