Considering your last comment “When talking about radical innovation a distinction should be made between autonomous radical innovation and radical innovation through takeovers.” the underlying question is: Can companies execute innovation themselves? If the answer is no an idea management infrastructure can still prove useful. If an idea is posted that seems very promising, you can go out and shop for the company that did execute the idea.

Hence, an Idea management infrastructure is useful no matter if you’re a maker or a buyer.

1. having an idea-management system in place nurtures and stimulates free-thinking within the organisation, provides a basis to prevent ownership issues and rewards people who are sincerely interested in improving the company’s existing service or product offering;
2. idea-management is also highly suited for providing a foundation for in-house generated radical innovations by non-specialists that have no direct access to or influence with the involved department heads;
3. it is hard to force innovation, meaning that more innovations just result from a ’spark’ than are actually achieved during a formal brainstorm sessions amongst colleagues. Organisations should have the infrastructure in place to catch any promising idea out there.

I’m very much for radical innovation, but that also requires entrepreneurs… The question should therefore maybe be; how large established organisations can attract and retain (a group of) entrepreneurs/visionaries that generate and execute these radical ideas? Assuming that that is nearly impossible, to which extent is radical innovation even possible within these organisations or do they just use their financial power to purchase promising ideas/companies?

When talking about radical innovation a distinction should be made between autonomous radical innovation and radical innovation through takeovers.

As with most corporate “euphemisms” or movements (TQM, JIT, Six Sigma), the organizations that embrace change and execute well see the benefits — those who make loud noises about their new initiatives or re-engineering, often do so just to ride the wave.

-David Wallace
Imaginatik Research
The Corporate Innovation blog – imaginatikresearch.blogspot.com