Introduction

Abstract

Consider for a moment two anecdotes on groundbreaking innovation:

Grace Choi — a 30-year-old Harvard Business School graduate, born to Korean immigrant parents and raised in Brooklyn — is an activist and businesswoman. Her company, Mink, hopes to use an innovative application of 3D printing technology to decentralize the cosmetic industry, and place the power to define beauty back in the hands of the consumer. On the way, she’ll be disrupting a $55 billion market.¹

The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba raised $25 billion with its initial public offering in the fall of 2014, the largest recorded IPO [initial public offering] in history. Some critics argue that Alibaba is only a derivative of American market leaders like Amazon and eBay. While Alibaba did not invent the e-commerce platform, the innovative application of existing technologies and business models has allowed it to dominate the world’s largest consumer market.²

As a driver of economic productivity, social progress, and ultimately human achievement, innovation is impacting every region and functional dimension of the global economy. Whether it is corporate giant Samsung spending $13.4 billion on research and development (R&D) in 2014 (ranking second globally) in an effort to dominate the hypercompetitive tech market,³ or agrichemical firm Syngenta introducing innovative crop chemical packaging and training for smallholder farmers in Kenya,⁴ innovation is inextricably tied to success and profit. Boston Consulting Group’s annual innovation survey found that 75 percent of CEOs saw innovation as a top-three priority, but a falling number of executives were confident in their company’s ability to innovate.⁵ Innovation is receiving full recognition as both an opportunity and a challenge.⁶