Accelerated radical innovation: Theory and application

Abstract

Radical innovation has been responsible for some of society's greatest advances over the past hundred years in fields as diverse as transportation, power, information technology, and medicine. But as scholars have found, it is such a long-term, chaotic, meandering, unpredictable process that promising radical innovation concepts are often never undertaken, to society's detriment. Does it need to be this way? Or can radical innovation be accelerated so that it is manageable within modern society's economic and political time horizon? This question prompted the organization of the Accelerated Radical Innovation (ARI) project five years ago. In this paper we summarize the ARI methodology as it currently stands and then report the results of an empirical verification with a radical medical innovation project that is currently under way — monochromatic X-rays for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Several conclusions were drawn. First, by and large, the ARI model tracked closely with the reality of this innovation, offering confirmation of its grounding in the real world of innovation. Second, the model offered a rationale and framework for this innovation process that could be more widely adopted. Third, the ARI model exposed critical issues whose early resolution could have accelerating the innovation cycle. Fourth, the application of a core principle of ARI, Systematic Competitive Intelligence, could have provided early warning on a competing technology that emerged suddenly. Last, the use of another core ARI concept, accelerated innovation prototyping, might help the innovator overcome the key barrier facing the innovation — the necessity of a long, expensive, high-risk clinical trial. Overall, the verification study confirms the potential of the ARI model to put the radical innovation process on a faster, lower-cost, better-managed track.