Question
How should companies optimize their innovation mix?
Answer
I don't entirely agree with the premise in the question details that "many innovation strategies are proven effective."
I think they are all equally ineffective, and innovation mostly happens in spite of them, not because of them.
So my answer to how to optimize is to double down massively on whichever elements happen to be the least ineffective at a given point in time. When the startup sector seems to be doing well, cut down on internal R&D and target acquisition. When the startup world is chasing some idiotic bubble of silliness, pull money back in.
When your company has no privileged access to market-beating returns, give money back to the market through share buybacks or dividends. Innovation for the sake of innovation is the same as growth for the sake of growth: the ideology of the cancer cell.
This condition holds far more often than companies like to admit: they've got nothing that can beat the market.
This is often because companies (necessarily) think of innovation in terms of business-model insurance. An option, but not an obligation, to find new markets or deepen existing ones. They rarely exercise that option until it is too late.
Of course, giving innovation money "back to the market" has no guarantee of efficiency either, but it does tend to be just marginally better under most conditions. It's better to give control of money to the market, and take it back via exception (i.e. private equity) rather than the other way around.
The only exception is really innovation that the market has no incentive to fund. This should remain taxpayer-funded (space, ARPANet...).
I realize this is something of a heretical view of innovation, but over 14 years of being in the "innovation industry" has taught me a couple of lessons in realism.
I think they are all equally ineffective, and innovation mostly happens in spite of them, not because of them.
So my answer to how to optimize is to double down massively on whichever elements happen to be the least ineffective at a given point in time. When the startup sector seems to be doing well, cut down on internal R&D and target acquisition. When the startup world is chasing some idiotic bubble of silliness, pull money back in.
When your company has no privileged access to market-beating returns, give money back to the market through share buybacks or dividends. Innovation for the sake of innovation is the same as growth for the sake of growth: the ideology of the cancer cell.
This condition holds far more often than companies like to admit: they've got nothing that can beat the market.
This is often because companies (necessarily) think of innovation in terms of business-model insurance. An option, but not an obligation, to find new markets or deepen existing ones. They rarely exercise that option until it is too late.
Of course, giving innovation money "back to the market" has no guarantee of efficiency either, but it does tend to be just marginally better under most conditions. It's better to give control of money to the market, and take it back via exception (i.e. private equity) rather than the other way around.
The only exception is really innovation that the market has no incentive to fund. This should remain taxpayer-funded (space, ARPANet...).
I realize this is something of a heretical view of innovation, but over 14 years of being in the "innovation industry" has taught me a couple of lessons in realism.