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The article covers Netflix, whose CEO was named "Business person of the year" for 2010. Netflix is an interesting case study from the perspective of innovation. It has entered the DVD rental market with a business model innovation (i.e. sending DVDs to subscribers through the postal service) that disrupted incumbents such as Blockbuster. At the same time, it has realized that this innovation could be only transient, since the diffusion of broadband would have quickly led to the new paradigm of "on demand" or "streaming" content. So, it is a case of a disruptive innovator that is not afraid of rapidly disrupting the same business model on which it has built its own fortune.

We know invenetion is not innovation. The implication - says commentator John Kay - is that while the former can be supported by through public R&D grants, these will not necessarily lead to innovation... and it is probably hopeless for a public entity to try and make the right bets on which will the winning innovations be. Finding the right intersection between technology opportunities and user needs is something that can better be left to markets.

Innovation is so important that most senior executives say that it's integral to their company's success. Because companies invest so much in it, getting a return is critical. Poor measurement practices result in bad or incomplete information, wasted resources, and a lower return on innovation investments. This article explains that most companies recognize the importance of measuring innovation and readily admit their shortcomings, but relatively few companies seem to be working as aggressively as they need to be to improve their capabilities in this area. The author suggests some metrics in order to measure the innovation of a firm.

Realising the limitations of their own knowledge, and internal R&D capabilities, an increasingly high number of companies are currently making the decision of partnering externally to develop new technologies. Companies' interactions with their business partners or even competitors are becoming more and more frequent. Since the potential for innovation increases consequently when people from various background interact, co-innovation or co-development partnerships are very efficient means to innovate. The term co-innovation, or co-development, refers to the extension of external partnerships and alliances in order to have access to, and to exploit new knowledge, new technologies, or new markets.

You can have lots of innovation in a seemingly low-tech item as diapers too. Click on the "diapers trials" video to get an idea of the effort behind incremental innovation.

There are numerous claims that Business Model Innovation is extremely important if you want to stay competitive and increase your revenues. Some would even say that Business Model Innovation has a stronger impact on margin growth than product and service innovations and, at the same time, can disrupt established industries. InnovationManagement asked Business Model Innovation guru Alexander Osterwalder a few questions.

Just a few years ago this would have sounded like science fiction. A fully customizable car with downloadable options as "apps". A radical innovation made possible by digitization and modularization that also implies a big change in business models too. Provided carmakers may be able to take up the product-related innovations, will they be able to tackle the business-related ones too?

The diffusion of netbooks exhibits many interesting traits of radical and disruptive innovation: the change in technical tradeoffs and product architecture (though not of core technology), the downsizing in performance (good enough for a new market), the inertia shown by incumbents.

IEEE's report "Patent Power" lists the top companies ranked by number of patents: is it really the best way to measure innovation? Shouldn't be better to measure the introduction of new products, and rank them by novelty and by widespread acceptance, in some way that reflects a more substantial measure of innovation and its impact on the economy?

Radical innovation is coming into the world of servers too, with multi-core, enery-efficient machines. It is interesting to notice the strong complementarity between this innovation and the emergence of cloud computing.

Boeing is suffering more than two years delay in launching its new composite-material 787 airliner and order cancellations are coming in. The reasons are interesting. First, Boeing has not only severely forfeited the product development capability it has always shown (e.g. in the 777 program) by shifting its attention and top management culture from engineering to sales. Second, it has inappropriately increased the degree of outsourcing, given the type of innovation involved. Using composite materials instead of alluminum for the airframe clearly is a radical innovation. Given that airplanes have an integral architecture, Boeing should have just done the opposite and developed competencies internally.

Another basic paper that discusses the impact of technological innovation on mature industries (TV in this case) and on their business models

Article that discusses the importance for companies to couple innovation strategy with the core values of their brands.

Nintendo still is a leader in the games console industry. Now it is the turn for portable devices  with 3D screens that do not require the use of glasses. One big question is whether this innovation will be disruptive or not, since 3D screens and games are "modules" that are likely to be available to all competitors.

We all know stories of radical innovation becoming disruptive because incumbent cannot change their competencies and embrace the upcoming technology. Maybe not any more, given the fluidity of modern markets for technology. In fact, one of the main players of the e-paper industry, PVI, is in fact a subsidiary of a major Taiwanese paper mill, and has pursued an interesting strategy of partnership and acquisition in order to transition to the new technology.

The emerging BRICs are partially changing the "demand" side of innovation. Instead of simply producing (or engineering) products targeted to the needs of developed countries, Indian companies are now rolling out a number of products targeted to the needs of the country. Journalists have come up with the term "Indovation". Scholars and managers might start questioning whether this might change the way technological trajectories emerge.

This an example of a business model change. The innovation is in the change of the way to make money. Deutsche-Bahn entered with its new business model in the market of another country, where the competitors are going in a completely different way.  But is the way to make money adopted by Deutsche-Bahn really innovative, or is Trenitalia going in the wrong way, allowing so  the German competitor to realize its strategy?

A few months ago, The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), started running a project on how to increase growth through innovation. Harvard Business School will send their MBA students to Sweden to learn and study the "Swedish miracle". How did they do it and what can we learn from the Swedish model about the importance of innovation for creating increased growth and competitiveness.

BusinessWeek has compiled its annual list of the most innovative companies in the world and, as in 2009, winning is just Apple. This ranking takes into account several parameters, including innovation capacity of a company, but also the sales of the previous three years, increasing the profit margin and value of the stock market. Apple is thus confirmed as the company invests more in innovation and produces all products "revolutionary". Followed by Google and Microsoft in second place for the first time on the podium. The only Italian company Fiat is present in the Top50, which ranks at 43 th place.