Questions for David Robertson, Innovation Expert, The Wharton School

There are two widely-recognized routes to innovation: incremental improvement and revolutionary disruption. Describe what you call ‘The Third Way’.

These two traditional types of innovation are still really important: We should always be thinking about how to improve our products and services for current customers; and we should also be thinking about the big disruptive forces in our industry and society, and how to embrace them. But innovation leaders need a more complete tool box than just a hammer and a screwdriver.

As I looked around, I noticed some companies doing things that didn’t fall neatly under either incremental or radical innovation. This was a different approach, whereby you surround your product with complementary innovations that make the core product even more valuable. If your core product is no longer new and your company is simply satisfying the same need it has s atisfied for many years, you should consider this approach.

You have studied how Gatorade adopted this route. Describe its