Introduction

For the second half of the twentieth century, industry has changed. Simply making stuff has been rapidly globalized and commodified. Particularly over the last 20 years, the feature that has differentiated companies and countries has been innovation. Innovation has become one of the foundational pillars of any modern economy and a primary driver for future growth. Today, we depend on innovation to change our quality of life at home and at work on a regular basis with new products and services, and emerging electronic technologies that digitally connect society. Every year, more inventions pour from labs and companies, more patents are filed in universities and more venture capital is invested in new startups. Yet there is are serious issues in commercialization of innovations. Thousands of new patents are filed but thousands also expire, unused. New ventures are founded, only to fail from issues that can easily be foreseen. The result is that we see a fraction of the new inventions and innovations translate into enterprises for economic and societal good. Much of our potential remains untapped. We call this the “innovation logjam”. The causes and cure of the innovation logjam are the topic of this book. In this first chapter we lay out the outline of the book; cover the definitions of common terms and begin with the case for existence of the innovation logjam. What “Industrializing Innovation” means, its basic elements and an actionable strategy to cure it are touched upon to enable development of concepts in later chapters. Finally, we walk the readers through the three parts of the book that guide them with the structure to facilitate modular reading.