How strategic innovation really gets started

Purpose – Explains (using a model and cases) how companies that lack a capability for continual strategic innovation can bring one into existence. Design/methodology/approach – Author developed histories of how continual innovation emerged or failed to emerge in six firms, drew conclusions based on what worked in the successes. Findings – Strategic innovation gets started with a five‐step process that involves improvising initial innovation processes, then learning from what was improvised. Research limitations/implications – Though the companies studied were selected to represent different industries and kinds of strategic innovation, the number was relatively small. Findings should be replicated in studies of more firms. Practical implications – Instead of using standard organizational change models that call for clear goals that leaders can manage to, firms seeking repeated strategic innovation should create inspiring but necessarily vague goals, improvise first steps toward them, and encourage emergence of innovation routines based on what was improvised. Originality/value – Provides an evidence‐based model of how to bring Continual Strategic Innovation into existence.