Een interessant artikel over de gevaren van te veel innovatie… het stuk over “innovation payback” en de “cash curve” is verplichte lectuur.

 The simple S curve plots the ROI of an innovative product, measuring the size and timing of a company’s investment in developing a new offering, the speed with which the product is brought to market, and the product’s scale—or time it takes to achieve projected market volume. The graphic forces a company to confront risk in a disciplined fashion and, ideally, move on if an innovation’s curve is heavy on the cost and potentially low on the return.

 Andrew and Sirkin present the cash curve of Apple’s iPod, no surprise, to illustrate maximum innovation payback. The graphic shows the company’s low startup costs (because Apple didn’t invent the portable digital music player, it simply redesigned it), speed to market, and ability to quickly achieve a large volume of sales. The iPod cash curve features a nearly flat line on the x-axis before the device’s launch and a skyrocketing upward swing postlaunch.