Most people agree that perseverance and discipline are very important qualities for any entrepreneur or business leader. You need plenty of both to run and grow a business successfully. At the same time, most of us associate innovation with ideation and creativity, which is actually odd. Innovation essentially breaks down into two key activities: Invention and Scaling. It is absolutely no use scaling up a bad innovation, but not scaling up a big idea can also fail to deliver value. Invention is about foresight, ideas and creation. Scaling is about quality, speed and predictability; actually it’s about operational excellence in development & research. Successful innovators therefore treat innovation & product development as a systematic capability that can be repeated time and again. I do realize that this sounds a bit counter intuitive, but if you want sustained innovation success, you’d better start managing the development of your future business with the same rigor and discipline as you manage your current business.

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