ABSTRACT
The need we shall discuss as a source of innovative opportunity is a very specifi c one: I call it ‘process need’. It is not vague or general but quite concrete. Like the unexpected, or the incongruities, it exists within the process of a business, an industry, or a service. Some innovations based on process need exploit incongruities, others demographics. Indeed, process need, unlike the other sources of innovation, does not start out with an event in the environment, whether internal or external. It starts out with the job to be done. It is task-focused rather than situationfocused. It perfects a process that already exists, replaces a link that is weak, redesigns an existing old process around newly available knowledge. Sometimes it makes possible a process by supplying the ‘missing link’.
