Back in December, when then-General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was apologizing to Congress for his company's failures, New York Times reporter Micheline Maynard wrote about GM's innovation problem:

G.M.’s biggest failing, reflected in a clear pattern over recent decades, has been its inability to strike a balance between those inside the company who pushed for innovation ahead of the curve, and the finance executives who worried more about returns on investment.  The two views were rarely in sync — in effect, fighting over the steering wheel that controlled G.M.’s direction — and the internal battles distracted G.M. from spotting shifts in the marketplace.

Time and again over the last 30 years, G.M. has spent billions of dollars on innovative ideas like its Saturn small-car company in the 1980s and the EV1 electric vehicle in the 1990s, only to then deprive those projects of further financing because money was needed elsewhere or because they were not delivering enough profit.

As president of the business consulting firm Innosight, Scott Anthony has become a bit of a pied piper for innovation.  He says there is no choice but to innovate.  In this interview with Harvard Business Review, Anthony discusses his new book, The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times, and stresses, "If you choose not to innovate, you are sowing the seeds of your own destruction":

You can read an excerpt of Anthony's book here.