Innovation is a hot topic these days. That’s a good thing since it’s hard for many companies to continue to innovate in the midst of a difficult economy.
Consider just a few examples of the attention innovation is getting. One new book worries that innovation is dead and another hails disruption as the best source of innovation. Fortune magazine’s tech guru David Kirkpatrick was interviewed during the magazine’s Brainstorm conference in July. Asked what’s his brainstorm from the conference, he said it’s that customers are becoming the main source of innovation. “Every single person” talked about this, he said, and managing it can be “tempestuous.” In August, in one of his “Deal Maker” blogs, Vinnie Mirchandani was “staggered” when he learned that a tech company exec thinks innovation has lost meaning.
At Teradata, we believe in balance – leverage disruption and keep working with customers on what they need next. We work to keep our innovation and development engine consistently going by getting input from leading-edge customers and by leveraging disruption. We work with customers of all sizes and levels of sophistication on what they’ll be doing in 3, 5 or 10 years to help guide the next innovation.
Disruption for its own sake doesn’t have any staying power. Bringing greater value to customers does.