Drucker's seven sources for innovative ideas

This following is an extract from the book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, by Peter F Drucker ..

Specifically, systematic innovation means monitoring seven sources for innovative opportunity.

The first four sources lie within the enterprise, whether business or public service institution, or within industry or service sector. They are therefore visible primarily to people within that industry or service sector. They are basically symptoms. But they are highly reliable indicators of changes that have already happened or can be made to happen with little effort. These four sources are:

• The unexpected - the unexpected success, the unexpected failure, the unexpected outside event;
• The incongruity - between reality as it actually is and reality as it is assumed to be or it 'ought to be';
• Innovation based on process need;
• Changes in industry structure or market structure that catch everyone unawares.

The second set of sources for innovative opportunity, a set of three, involves changes outside the enterprise or industry;

• Demographics (population changes)
• Changes in perception, mood and meaning;
• New knowledge, both scientific and nonscientific.

The lines between these seven source areas of innovative opportunities are blurred, and there is considerable overlap between them. They can be likened to seven windows, each on a different side of the same building. Each window shows some features that can also be seen from the window on either side of it. But the view of the centre of each is distinct and different.

..end of extract.

Drucker's book (first published in 1985) is useful to this day, but there has since been a lot more work done by others to understand and foster practises for effective and beneficial innovation in business. Some of this is covered elsewhere on this website.

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