The Innovation Edge: How Large Companies Lose It and How to Get It Back

Merle Symes's book, The Innovation Edge: How Large Companies Lose It and How to Get It Back, offers a comprehensive roadmap for large, mature organizations seeking to reignite their innovative capabilities. Symes emphasizes that in today’s rapidly changing, hypercompetitive world, continuous strategic innovation is not just advantageous but essential for survival. The book explores why established firms tend to lose their ability to innovate over time, and provides detailed principles, processes, and organizational shifts needed to transform into relentless innovators. It advocates a paradigm shift from traditional, command-and-control management to a more entrepreneurial, risk-tolerant mindset that actively manages uncertainty through staged de-risking, experimentation, and the fostering of an innovation-centric culture. Drawing on fifty years of executive and entrepreneurial experience, Symes provides deep insights and practical strategies to help leaders and managers foster a culture of continuous renewal and industry-shaping breakthroughs.

The Innovation Edge provides the key arguments and themes that underpin successful innovation in large organizations. The author highlights the paradox that size and complexity often hinder agility, and how organizational culture, short-term financial focus, risk aversion, and rigid structures become barriers to breakthrough thinking. The book underlines the importance of developing an innovation mindset at all levels, establishing flexible processes like the Proof Point Process, and managing a portfolio of high-risk, high-reward initiatives using active risk management principles akin to venture capital strategies. Symes emphasizes that innovation must be embedded into the organization’s DNA—everyone, everywhere, all the time—rather than being the sole responsibility of a charismatic leader. The book is rich with practical tools, such as breaking risks into bite-sized pieces, testing assumptions early, and preserving alternate pathways, which collectively enable organizations to navigate uncertainty and seize emergent opportunities. Symes advocates for a cultural and structural reinvention that transforms organizations into perpetual innovation engines, capable of continuous renewal and sustained competitive advantage. It is bold, hugely relevant, and a masterclass in innovative thinking.