kSensei Blog

Innovate on Purpose: The politics of innovation

You may be wondering what “politics” and innovation have in common. I was thinking that innovation in many firms is a proof of the “tragedy of the commons” concept in economics - but no one wants to read a blog post about economics, and much of the challenge of innovation is about beauracracy and culture, not economics.

Wikipedia quotes Aristotle as saying that “That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it”. Likewise, innovation, while “important” to many different groups and functions within an organization, seems to suffer from a lack of attention and focus.