"Maintenance has lived in a twilight world, hardly visible in the formal accounts of societies make of themselves," or so wrote David Edgerton in his The Shock of the Old (Profile Books: 2006). The same could be said of the software world.

It has become increasingly evident that companies that fail to establish adequate innovation processes are likely to suffer in the current recession. As economic conditions bite deeper into revenues from existing products, new products will not be available to replace them, and ultimately, the company will fall behind the competition. While discussion of innovation tends to focus on idea creation, the real source of new opportunities lies in the processes that further innovation and bring ideas forward to completed new products, new services, or new ways of doing business.

In the first two parts of this Executive Update series on Cutter's annual survey of innovation practices, we described the enterprise innovation chain (value innovation, management innovation, business model innovation, and invention) and identified key findings of the research. Here in Part III, we present additional detailed characteristics of organizations that assess themselves as successful innovators, efficiently managing their innovation processes.

Paul Robertson, founder and former leader for 34 years of the world-renowned Medici String Quartet, Visiting Professor in Music and Medicine at one of the UK's leading medical universities, and an authority on music and the brain, draws upon his personal leadership experiences and highlights the paradoxes and conflicts inherent in effective leadership. In this Summit 2007 keynote, He demonstrates the art of leadership and reveals how you can learn to enjoy a leadership process that harnesses uncertainty to stimulate the vital creative energy your organization needs to be innovative and remain competitive. You'll also discover new cognitive and emotional markers that can make the difference between leadership success and failure.

Cutter Innovation employs the unique Innovation Mapping methodology developed by Cutter Fellow, Harvard Business School Professor, Rob Austin. Innovation Mapping compares organizations, teams, and people along a number of dimensions that impact innovation performance... Learn More