Articles

Notes from the innovation jungle.

Robert Pearlstein on commercialization strategy, innovation leadership, and the long road from a working prototype to a paying customer. A new piece most months.

Deep Technology Innovation

Why is it so hard to go from lab to market?

Doug Engelbart invented the computer mouse and licensed it for $40,000. The story explains what separates a breakthrough from a business.

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Innovation Strategy

Innovation and speculation: two sides of the same coin

Large companies treat early-stage technology as speculation, and speculation as risk. It is neither — it is the essence of innovation, and it can be managed.

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Commercialization Strategy

Crossing the chasm between lab and market

A wall-climbing robot, a market that looked obvious, and the two mistakes that strand more breakthroughs than any others.

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Innovation Leadership

Are you a hacker or a hustler?

Hewlett and Packard. Wozniak and Jobs. Ibuka and Morita. The partnerships behind the icons were never solo efforts — and corporate R&D keeps forgetting it.

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Customer Insight

The art of the possible

Customers can only describe the world they see. Finding what they cannot articulate takes observation, immersion and creativity — not surveys.

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Applied Commercialization

Not all customer needs are the same

Underserved, unserved, emerging. Most teams look only for the first kind of need and miss the other two entirely.

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