My firm has its own community of practice dedicated to innovation. Since I work in a consulting firm, the term innovation can be misleading. We aren't producing anything tangible. Instead, we come up with innovative ideas. The tricky thing is that we don't actually implement any of the innovative ideas ourselves... and they really aren't innovative in the first place. I'll explain. Our innovation lab is geared at coming up with ideas that we can sell in order to win contracts and increase total billable hours.
However, we aren't really leaders, considering that the innovation we come up with is already being done. We just learn about it, become experts on whatever the trend may be, and then re-package it for potential customers. A lot of our focus lately has been on social media. Facebook and Google would have no need for our services. As a matter of fact, we learn a lot of lessons from them. Our strategy is to break down the innovation efforts that work, determine how they can be best implemented, and sell these services.
Looking at the list of once strong companies that have gone out of business, one can see where a consulting firm would come into play. These companies either don't know how to go about doing business any other way, or just refuse to do so. A firm like mine will use lessons learned from industry leaders in order to spur innovation for failing companies.
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