Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

352 BRAND RELEVANCE
Of course, it is not easy. The Epilogue summarizes why by
putting the opportunity and challenges into perspective.
Key Takeaways
To generate innovation, there needs to be a supporting organization
with three rather contradictory qualities. The organization
needs:
• Selective opportunism: good, ongoing, external intelligence;
the ability to detect and understand trends; the willingness
to engage in substantial and transformational innovation;
and the agility to pounce on opportunities when they arise
but to do so selectively. Evaluation processes and strategic
guidance inhibit drift.
• Dynamic strategic commitment: the willingness to focus
on, to fund, and to execute behind an opportunity and to
engage in incremental innovation. The commitment needs
to be dynamic in that it allows for withdrawing from disappointing
ventures rather than being stubborn.
• Organization - wide resource allocation so that initiatives
that do not fi t into powerful business units can receive
resources. This depends on having an evaluation tool that is
applied to all businesses within the organization, including
those that have already received commitment.
For Discussion
1. Consider GE ’ s innovation initiatives. What is the downside?
2. Identify organizations that are very opportunistic. Identify
those that are committed.