Innovation is the lifeblood of every modern corporation competing in the dynamic global marketplace. New ideas are critical to ongoing innovation, and the source of new ideas is a widely diverse workforce. Corporate diversity is often hindered by homosocial reproduction—the tendency of corporations to hire the vast majority of workers from a specific geographic area, school, religious institution, club, or sport. In addition to overcoming institutionalized homosocial reproduction, corporate leaders can propel innovation by developing significant goals, encouraging experimentation and excusing small failures, broadly sharing company information, welcoming productive friction, and displaying leadership courage. The innovation that results is a matter of corporate viability.

A number of major corporations in India are now fully integrated into the dynamic world economy. To maintain their position as active participants, these corporations will have to repel global competitors by producing a regular stream of innovation. Why is continuous innovation important? Wharton Business School, Professor, Tony Davila said, "Superior innovation provides a company the opportunities to grow faster, better, and smarter than their competitors—and ultimately to influence the direction of their industry." Corporate Strategist, Gary Hamel, similarly noted, "Without radical innovation, a company will devote a mountain of resources to achieve a molehill of differentiation." General Electric, CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, said, "The only long-term source of profit, and the only reason to invest in a company, is your confidence in its ability to innovate." Scholars and corporate executives alike have long believed that ignoring the inevitability of change can be fatal to a corporation. As IDEO corporate CEO, David Kelley said, "The biggest single trend we've observed is the growing acknowledgement of innovation as a centerpiece of corporate strategies and initiatives. What's more, we've noticed that the more senior the executives, the more likely they are to frame their companies' needs in the context of innovation."

Companies cannot continue their regular trajectory and yet anticipate that it will yield innovative ideas. As strategist Hamel said, "In an increasingly non-linear world, only non-linear ideas are likely to create new wealth. Radical innovation is innovation that has the power to change customer expectations, alter industry economics and redefine the basis for competitive advantage… our interest is in innovation that is not only radical but also extensive in that it views every component of the business concept as a potential candidate for rule-breaking innovation." His views were echoed by Stanford University, Professor, Robert Sutton: "When innovation is the goal, organizations need variation in what people do, think about, and produce. What might be called errors and mutations in a system meant to do old things in old ways are the lifeblood of innovation." Sutton also noted that, for innovation to occur, company leaders have to take an entirely new path: "To build a company where innovation is a way of life, rather than a rare accident that can't be explained or replicated, people need to discard, and often reverse, their deeply ingrained beliefs about how to treat people and make decisions. They need to follow an entirely different kind of logic to design and manage their companies, even though it may lead them to do things that some people—especially people focused on making money right now—find to be counterintuitive, troubling, or even downright wrong."

HRM Review Magazine, Corporate Diversity, Conventional Wisdom, Homosocial Reproduction, Corporate Innovation, Corporate Culture, Decision Making, Strategic Mechanism, Productive Friction, Radical Innovation, Creative Abrasion, Corporate Strategy.