Incremental vs Radical Innovation - Do Consumers Care

I was reading yet another article on innovation on the web when a short sentence caught my eye:

Do consumers sincerely differentiate between incremental and radical innovation?

The author went on to describe the difference between the two

As I see it, incremental innovation... is most times, short-term and more profit-oriented. Furthermore, incremental innovation is used by larger corporations who might not have the right tools, creativity or knowledge to create new original cutting-edge products/services yet have the financial capabilities to execute and implement them!

It's true that most radical innovations are actually discrete accumulations of much smaller improvements yet they have the ability to be life changing, and those seem to have seized to exist these days!

In a nutshell, it seems in his view, radical innovation is what happens when you do a lot of incremental innovation. Sooner or later you reach a Tipping Point, where the next iteration is a radically new idea. (For further discussion of Tipping Points read Malcolm Gladwell's fascinating book of the same name.)

In some sense I would have to agree. Often radically new ideas are iterations of ideas already being explored, but aren't seen by the general public. And this is where I would diverge form the author's opinion.

I actually DO believe that big corporations have the " .. right tools, creativity or knowledge to create new original cutting-edge products/services... ". They also have the financial wherewithal to launch them. What they don't have is the ability to take a huge risk.

Large companies are risk adverse by nature (unless you are a financial institution apparently given how we've been watching them implode over the last year.) Large companies often come up with radical new innovative products but for one reason or another choose not to launch.

Sometimes this is due to how destabilizing the innovation would be to current products. Sometimes it is because of entrenched political positions against this type of innovation. Sometimes it's just that the champion is not well connected. (He or she has been known to leave said big company and go out on his or her own for just that reason and successfully launch the radical new idea.

But back to the question: Do consumers care if a new idea is radical or just an incremental innovation? No, I don't think so. Consumers are motivated by products and services that meet their needs. If that need can be met by making a small change - great. If it requires a radical change- that's fine too.

True consumers get a lot more excited about a radical innovation, but there's a place for both in any well run business. Why, because radical innovation is much riskier. For every success there are hordes of failures.

A well run company pursues both strategies. Incremental innovation builds the infrastructure for radical innovation and provides the fall back when things don't turn out quite like planned.

Which happens rather more often that one would wish.