Finding a lower-risk path to high-impact innovations

True enabling innovations can yield rewards that go far beyond most other forms of innovation and give companies a long-lasting competitive edge. However, pursuing them may seem at odds with the pressure for short-term results. In an increasingly unpredictable and resource-constrained world, accelerated, lower-risk pursuit of enabling innovations could be a key to long-term success. Such innovations offer the potential to create enduring growth for the organizations driving them, not simply based on their functional or conceptual advances, but also because of the influence they can have on broader societal factors that can drive widespread adoption and use across multiple application spaces. It is their ability to change society that drives economic gains, not the other way around. Managers would do well to be aware of this counterintuitive cause-effect relationship in advance. In matters of innovation, risk, and return, understanding enabling innovations and lily pad strategies can lead executives to smarter (and less risky) decision-making and investment strategies.