Disney’s Innovation Approach

From CustomerThink – Ed Muzio talks about the Disney approach to innovation. Worth a look.

Muzio talks about Dreamers, Realists, and Critics. I’ll add that dreamers have a bad rep in business – people think of dreaming as a scattered, disorganized activity. In fact, dreaming succeeds wonderfully as the first step, providing it has a context.

Realists have dreamers as their context – they can look at dreams and cite the realities that the company has to work with to achieve them. Critics have both dreamers and realists as their context – that’s why their job is so easy.

But what context does a dreamer have? Then answer is: the vision. Companies succeed at innovation when they dream in the context of where they, their industry, and the world is going.