Types of Innovations

 There are four types of Innovation.

• Sustainable Innovation
• Breakthrough Innovation
• Basic Research 
• Disruptive Innovation

Innovation needs to be treated as a tool to accomplish an objective. Just as a single marketing tactic or a single source of funding can’t be relied upon for the entire life of an organization, there also needs to be a portfolio of innovation strategies.

With this in mind, Innovation Matrix was created by the author to help identify the right strategy to solve a problem by asking how well can we define the problem? And How well can we define the skill domain needed to solve it?

Sustainable Innovation: In this innovation existing capabilities in existing markets are improved with pretty clear domain of what the company intend to do. Most innovations happen because companies try to make things better and efficient. For example: strategic road mapping, traditional R&D labs etc.

Breakthrough Innovation: In this type of innovation problem is well defined but the domain where the company needs to work is uncertain and unclear, This is also known as open innovation as companies explore new things to solve the issue.

Basic Research: It happens when problem and domain both are not well identified.

Disruptive Innovation: It comes by innovating your business models. Companies serve the non-customers that accounts for a large portion of customers untapped by any company. Clayton Christensen discovered that when the basis of competition changes due to technological or any other shifts, companies can find themselves getting better at things the customers want less of