I recently wrote an article about innovation during 2018, and in it I made some disparaging remarks about Apple, which may or may not have caused it to lose a tremendous amount of market capitalization. Or perhaps the stock was overvalued, and Apple has become more interested in margin than in innovation. I’ll let you, gentle reader, be the judge.

What I want to do here is to speculate on the coming year. What do we know about the state of innovation? What do we think will happen in 2019? What innovation methods or approaches will gain ground? Which activities or approaches will lose steam? Will innovation finally cross the chasm, leave the hype cycle “trough of disillusionment” to take its rightful place in the “slope of enlightenment?” We’ll explore.

Looking ahead in 2019

As with any evolving or unfolding management philosophy, there are factors that can accelerate innovation or change it dramatically this year, and factors that will rise to create barriers to innovation. More important, though, I think we’ll see a reframing and repurposing of innovation, as many corporations decide they can’t do innovation effectively enough internally and become distracted by digital transformation.

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