Boston.com / Business / Innovation isn't the panacea it seems

Boston.com / Business / Innovation isn't the panacea it seems:

"Now a pair of MIT professors has dissected the practice of innovating and found it to be generally misunderstood. In ''Innovation: The Missing Dimension,' published by Harvard University Press in October, Richard K. Lester and Michael J. Piore argue that much of the innovation effort in American business goes into solving problems but relatively little into identifying possibilities and opportunities in the marketplace.

'''We are in danger of learning the wrong lessons about innovation,' Lester and Piore warn in the book. ''As a result, we risk neglecting those capabilities that are the real wellsprings of creativity in the US economy -- the capacity to integrate across organizational, intellectual, and cultural boundaries, the capacity to experiment, and the habits of thought that allow us to make sense of radically ambiguous situations and move forward in the face of uncertainty.'"