Big ot Small Best for Innovation?

There is an interesting article in The New York Times. I quote:

There was a rich vein of business-school research supporting the notion that innovation comes most naturally from small-scale outsiders. That was the headline point that a generation of business people, venture investors and policy makers took away from Clayton M. Christensen’s 1997 classic, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” which examined the process of disruptive change......

Solutions won’t come from the next new gadget or clever software, though such innovations will help. Instead, they must plug into a larger network of change shaped by economics, regulation and policy. Progress, experts say, will depend on people in a wide range of disciplines, and collaboration across the public and private sectors.

“These days, more than ever, size matters in the innovation game,” said John Kao, a former professor at the Harvard business school and an innovation consultant to governments and corporations.

Comment: I am increasingly concerned that the emphasis on technological innovation is misplaced. Innovation is easier in my opinion that mastery of the innovation. It was not the first firm to produce an operating system, but Microsoft that built a global software powerhouse. Apple has been a consistent innovator, but the IBM clones dominate the PC market.

Indeed, it is almost a rule that an invention is uneconomical at first, requiring improvements to become economically successful. JAD