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OVERVIEW:As companies mature, they generally decline in creating new value due to the failure of their internal innovation process. The aging organization comes to be dominated by operations executives, who tend to be intolerant of the different cultural needs of the variety of corporate segments needed for high-innovation productivity, particularly “the fuzzy front end.” But decline is not inevitable. A study of exceptional mature companies that have maintained their innovative force shows some clear characteristics in common. The broad-based corporate cultural commitment to innovation as a way of life is particularly important in these companies in contrast to the tendency to attempt to make innovation a functional activity by delegation to R&D or Marketing.
Sheldon A. Buckler (Sat,) studied this question.