Innovation - Getting Beyond the Breakthrough
Hagel contends that U.S. companies' innovation efforts tend to focus on home runs — big, honking inventions that can, out of the gate, produce hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and transform entire industries. In other words, products such as Apple's iPod.
But Hagel is fond of pointing out that even the iPod wasn't exactly an overnight breakthrough for Apple. Rather, he notes, the device has its roots in a company called PortalPlayer, which had been developing an operating system for digital music players for several years before it ultimately teamed with Apple on the iPod.
