Incremental Innovation

It seems as though a significant portion of innovation occurs at the margin - small changes that improve existing technologies or methods.

The prevalence of incremental innovation is not surprising - and it may even be advantageous in the market. Encouraging customers to adopt "disruptive" technologies is much more difficult than encouraging the adoption of something familiar - but better.

In many cases, this aversion toward the unknown can be quite discouraging for innovators, and can even hinder the use of vastly superior methods and technologies.

Check out Michael Schrage's interesting take on the topic of innovation and its adoption in MIT's Technology Review (sadly, this is Michael's last column for TR).