Innovation as a generation force

Innovation is a generative force. It transforms opportunities into value - not only for commercial advantage but for other great endevours like the pursuit of well being, environmental improvement, social advance etc.

If innovation is seen as an energy stream, then a systems perspective is helpful. From a managerial perspective the quantity of flows, in relation to needs and possibilities, the cost of flows, the speed of their movement are all significant dimensions.

These flows cannot take place in a vacuum. They require resources. It is here that the resource based view of the firm held us to understand how certain configurations of resources are more than ways of getting things done.

The term 'dynamic capabilities' refers to those attributes of an organisation that enables it to adapt, to become more relevant, to become stronger within the currently prevailing wider context. Clearly the notion of dynamic capabilities is related to the resource based view but the level of analysis is different as resources in themselves are but the building blocks of capabilities that may or may not be self-generative. Dynamic capabilities are that which makes and organisation an organism. Also organisations generally have machine like attributes which lack generative capacity.

This having been said, even those who espouse dynamic capabilities as a valid organisational metaphor admit that it is difficult to recognize a dynamic capability when you see it. For us, in most types of organisation, it is management that is the most powerful and pervasive dynamic capability of all.