Those pesky fast followers

The last post, which was posted over a week ago (time flies in the blogosphere!), showed examples of firms pursuing a "fast follower" innovation strategy. You can also look at this as an exploiting innovation strategy (as opposed to an exploring innovation strategy). Of course, no firm follows only an exploiting innovation strategy, but there will be a preference -- which will be evident in the firm's actions.

Firms operating in Asia (particularly China) can learn a thing or two from Japanese firms about innovation and, importantly, protecting those innovations. There is no love lost between Japan and China, yet Japanese firms still want a piece of the action over in China. A key goal for firms like Toyota is to make the outcome of its innovation activities intangible: hard to copy. It is the cumulative, ongoing, incremental innovations across an entire organization that are hard to pillage.

The following Manifesto from the ChangeThis Web site presents some wonderful insights into Toyota and its culture of innovation. This piece places a lot of emphasis on the importance of attitude to innovation.