Innovation is Everyone´s Responsibility and Why Innovation Matters Here you get my slides from a recent presentation in Turkey where I was asked to provide perspectives on innovation through two important questions / lenses: Why innovation matters? My key message is that innovation matters if your company wants to stay relevant – and survive. It is that simple. Just consider this piece of information: At the current churn rate, 75% of the S&P 500 firms in 2011 will be replaced by new firms entering the S&P500 in 2027. There is so much change and it is happening so fast. Innovation can mean many things, but it is a general understanding that it helps you fight irrelevance and helps you drive change rather than becoming a victim of it. Innovation is everyone´s responsibility. I work with innovation on three levels; incremental, radical and “in between”. The latter is often the most relevant because it can really change things and have a strong impact while companies have a good chance of succeeding with this with the right setup, processes and people. Radical or disruptive innovation is highly desirable, but it is also very difficult to achieve. It requires a lot of luck as well as the right framework and conditions for this luck to happen. Very few organizations succeeds here. While everyone in an organization should contribute to incremental innovation, I don´t think everyone should work with radical or “in between” innovation – at the same time that is. Most people just have to focus on the getting their daily jobs done. However, every employee should be given an opportunity to contribute to radical and “in between” innovation through corporate programs that could be based on the concept of intrapreneurship, incubators, accelerators or something similar. When it comes to getting people to understand that everyone actually can contribute to all three levels of innovation, I like to use the Ten Types of Innovation framework by Doblin as it is a simple and visual concept that can open the eyes of the “unusual suspects” when it comes to innovation contribution. Well, check my slides and let me know what you think. I am of course open for discussing a session or talk near you :-)