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The Opportunity of Recombination
The New Innovation Engine
In today’s competitive landscape, organizations face a critical question: How should they innovate effectively? They’re searching for sustainable approaches to innovation that will create value that keeps customers engaged and willing to pay and helps them avoid obsolescence.
Recombination: The Hidden Engine of Innovation
Evidence suggests a fundamental shift is occurring. Successful organizations are moving away from incremental improvements toward recombinant innovation. This powerful approach creates new ideas and technologies by combining or reconfiguring existing knowledge, concepts, and technologies in novel ways.
This approach is particularly powerful in digital environments, where each new combination exponentially increases future possibilities.
As Brynjolfsson and McAfee explain:
“Digital innovation is recombinant innovation in its purest form… Each development becomes a building block for future innovations… Building blocks don’t ever get used up. In fact, they increase the opportunities for future recombinations.”
Recombination thus creates a self-reinforcing flywheel effect. New combinations don’t just solve immediate problems — they expand the “adjacent possible,”…
