Innovation Pyramid
Tool
Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has come up with a simple strategic tool she calls the Innovation Pyramid. After decades of researching patterns of innovation success among leading companies, Kanter notes that winning innovators prioritize and balance their investments in new or improved products and services in a similar manner. When listed, they form a graphic similar to the U.S. Agriculture Dept.'s nutrition pyramid. Kanter's Innovation Pyramid features a few big gambles at the top, a wider set of fresh prototypes and ventures in the testing stages around the middle, and a broad range of early-stage projects and improvements on existing ideas or products at the pyramid's base. The Innovation Pyramid allows managers to monitor quickly their portfolio of risk. The idea is to have a variety of new concepts in play with varying degrees of risk and returns.