Interview with innovation guru Geoffrey Moore: seeking solutions to intractable problems
Abstract
Purpose
This is an interview with innovation guru Geoffrey Moore, the author of five books that have gained an enthusiastic following among corporate managers pursuing market development. It offers a wide range of insights on innovation management.
Design/methodology/approach
Two Strategy & Leadership contributing editors, one a CEO of several startups and the other a senior academic who often writes about innovation, asked Moore about his experiences advising high tech companies.
Findings
Moore believes the best way of thinking about innovation is to put your company in service to an attractive target market to work on a solution to a seemingly intractable problem.
Practical implications
Moore believes the biggest innovation mistake large firms make is to have amodel for “childhood” (the incipient innovation) and “adulthood” (the mature innovation) but no model or patience for adolescence (the struggling innovation). Most innovations are killed during their adolescent stage.
Originality/value
Moore believes that Job #1 for a CEO is to declare what is core (that will contribute to long‐term competitiveness). The stronger that declaration, the easier it is to manage the execution effort downstream. CEOs are naturally reluctant to pursue this course because they want to maintain a portfolio of options. But large organizations become impossible to steer when there is insufficient commitment to taking a specific course.
Keywords
Citation
Davidson, A. and Leavy, B. (2007), "Interview with innovation guru Geoffrey Moore: seeking solutions to intractable problems", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 35 No. 5, pp. 4-8. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878570710819152
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited