A colleague of mine named Nadim passed along a great write up of a recent Economist article on innovation. You can print the full article from the Economist website. Click on "Buy PDF" - it's actually free.

Summary
The Economist highlights that innovation—defined as fresh thinking that creates value—is responsible for much of the productivity growth in the world economy (vs. more capital and people). Where this is particularly relevant to CRM is that a lot of this fresh thinking comes in the form of new business models and processes. Moreover, these fresh ideas come not from centralized planning, but a variety of sources, chief among them employees, partners and customers. Corralling and prioritizing fresh ideas, therefore, is a key challenge for businesses that want to innovate and grow. The article makes a case for more open innovation models, where all ideas are out in the open, and points out that the really hard part is filtering those ideas.

Why Is it Relevant?

• Salesforce Ideas helps companies find and filter new ideas
• Salesforce.com’s CRM apps help companies adapt as they innovate processes and business models

Eric Von Hoppel (MIT)

User-driven innovation [occurs when] users who feel passionate about certain products often fiddle around with them because they fail to provide exactly what they want.

Firms should keep a closer watch on new and dissatisfied users, who are much more likely to be the source of disruptive ideas.

One of the biggest thoughts emerging from innovation research [is that] neither idea generation nor execution is as important or as tricky as the filtering process that links the two.

Larry Page (Google)

Silicon Valley doesn’t have better ideas and isn’t smarter than the rest of the world but it has an edge in filtering and executing them.