個案總覽

Innovation is a perennial management challenge. That's why, for decades, MIT Sloan Management Review has been publishing new research and insights about innovation, from business school researchers as well as from leading business executives and consultants. For this article, the authors tapped into that knowledge base. They combed through the MIT SMR archives, looking for older articles with innovation insights that today's MIT SMR readers might have missed but that still remain timely and have wide relevance. The authors winnowed their list to 12 essential innovation articles from the MIT SMR archives. They distilled key concepts from those archival articles into 12 brief innovation insights contained in this article. The insights cover a range of innovation-related topics -from managing innovative employees to innovating in different ways -and draw on work by researchers from a number of universities, including Cambridge Judge Business School, Harvard Business School, London Business School, and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Clayton Christensen is best known for his ideas about how disruptive innovations can transform markets. In this wide-ranging interview, he discusses topics ranging from the downturn's effect on innovation to opportunities to improve the U.S. health care system. Christensen thinks the economic downturn will be good for innovation, because downturns force innovators to adapt their strategies to the market quickly and inexpensively. What's more, he notes that resource constraints stimulate breakthrough thinking. And, despite the recent problems in the financial markets, Christensen believes that, overall, innovation has been beneficial in financial services. He cites historical financial innovations, such as no-load mutual funds and index funds, as examples of the way disruptive innovations in financial services have benefited consumers. However, he also notes that there are markets in which regulation is necessary -and the securities industry is one. Christensen, who is the coauthor of a new book on health care, The Innovator's Prescription, also discussed how disruptive innovation might improve the U.S. health care system. He explains how disruptive innovation helps make goods and services inexpensive and accessible.