Michael Mandel has an interesting article at BusinessWeek where he speculates that part of the blame for the current economic slump can be placed on a failure to innovate over the last decade. This is somewhat shocking at first, given all the hype innovation has received in the business world and the general press. On the surface the technological revolution has been greater then the industrial revolution…until you look at the actual contributions to business and society.
True, technology is moving forward at leaps and bounds and it seems new and promising research is announced daily that will save the environment/cure cancer/prevent bad breath/insert your favorite cause, but much of it has proven devilishly difficult to bring to full realization.
The argument continues that this failure of innovation to deliver on promise caused debt driven growth based on a fantasy vision of the future. I can buy into this pretty easily for biotech, energy, technology and a few other areas, but I’m still looking for a connection to the cement boom. The argument could be made that cement manufacturing as an overall process has been in the slow lane for a long time. It’s a low risk kind of business after all. Innovation has been primarily focused on incremental improvements in production, quality, reliability, environmental compliance, and cost. Very few producers are really trying to do anything differently, just better, and the OEM’s are simply meeting the demands of the market.
Tell us what you think. How did the innovation gap figure into the cement production investment bubble? Should producers be investing in completely new approaches to making cement? … or is there simply an enormous amount of low hanging fruit readily available in the day-to-day operation of a cement plant – yet to be tapped?
Trying to decide whether to innovate or survive in tumultuous times? Asking the question misses the point, the only answer is to do both! But how? Over at Harvard Business Publishing, they have started to publish a series of articles with some of the key points from a brand new book, The Silver Lining: An innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times. The summaries sound promising and the book is definitely on my near term reading list. Read the articles in the links and download a free copy of the first chapter and it will probably be on yours as well.