Outthinkers #144—Gina O'Connor: Building Your Company's Innovation Competencies
Jun 17, 2025
Gina O’Connor, a professor at Babson College, specializes in Corporate Entrepreneurship and Breakthrough Innovation. She shares insights from her extensive research on the constraints of innovation, emphasizing that human factors often pose greater challenges than resources. O’Connor identifies three competencies crucial for innovation: discovery, incubation, and scaling. She advocates for viewing failures as learning opportunities and highlights the necessity of tailored management systems and strong internal networks to foster sustainable growth in established companies.
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Four Key Innovation Uncertainties
- Breakthrough innovation faces uncertainties beyond technical challenges, including resource and organizational uncertainties.
- Organizational uncertainty, such as inconsistent leadership commitment, often delays innovation progress longer than other uncertainties.
Three Innovation Competencies
- Innovation capability breaks down into three distinct competencies: discovery, incubation, and acceleration.
- Each competency requires separate people, processes, and metrics rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Manage Innovation Like Portfolio
- Hold innovation opportunities longer in incubation before transitioning to business units to avoid resource starvation and failure.
- Manage innovation as a portfolio to allow merging of related ideas and maximize strategic value.
