Innovation can happen by chance, without a determined effort or specific methodology. But when it does, it's more like luck than strategic progress. While there is a role for serendipity in strategy – being able to take advantage of pleasant surprises -- too often, that's the only way companies approach innovation: with fingers crossed. The same organizations that diligently recruit to fill their ranks with clever and creative people often fail to put in place a process that seeks to get the best out of those people.

Innovation, simply defined, is the process that takes new ideas and implements them in a way that creates value. It's not the same thing as invention, which is an event that occurs at a distinct point in time, often resulting in a single product. Innovation is the extension of invention, the act of bringing things that are invented to market, repeatedly.

An innovation process creates measurable value, by increasing productivity, improving quality, generating new markets, or creating other benefits to consumers, producers, or both.

Over the last decade, the Internet has had a profound impact on business. It has spawned a slew of new business models and has helped make operating models vastly more efficient. By contrast, the Web’s impact on management models has been relatively modest.

So much of the leadership conversation centers around the question “how do I get more out of my people?” I don’t think I’ve been at a conference or sat in on a conversation with business leaders where the subject—and that exact phrase—hasn’t come up.