Most people think that disruptive innovation is the only significant type of innovation and all other types of innovation cannot be treated at par with this one as they are somewhat inferior. I would have agreed with this view had I not come across “Dealing with Darwin” (by Geoffrey Moore), the book I talked about in the previous blog with the same title.
When I learnt that there are several types of innovations categorized into various zones in the life cycle of a product or a technology. These zones include: Product leadership (birth and early struggle of the product/technology), Customer Intimacy (where the product is making into the heart of the customer, making its space in the customer mind and life), Operation excellence (build the same product better, faster and cheaper - here is the zone where Indian software service companies showed a lot of innovation) and finally Category renewal (where you know when, where and how to stop the technology and move all the lessons learnt into something new which takes you to the next level). In these four zones there are about 15 types of innovations.
I have focused mostly on these aspects when I finally gave my talkon Innovation at CA (on 29th January). It was a great learning experience for me as I thoroughly enjoyed my preparation for this talk.
If some one is interested in learning more about these concepts they should buy and read this book AND refer to Geff’s website:
Posted by Vasudeva Varma 
