Innovation - a challenge in any business. Discuss your thoughts?

Yes I do agree with communication and management of the risks/opportunities generated by innovation. It dépends on your company and your customers mindset. Also it can be allowed or forbidden by contract.

I would posit that the autonomous cars almost count as invention, rather than innovation.

By definition, innovation is improvement by increments, small or large.

Sorry to intervene again but I am very interesting to learn from all the comments above. Today, I am program manager inside a PMO which name is "Transformation and Innovation". If you ask me, is not a good idea to name somethng. Inside this PMO we are pushing and managing everything that is not "business as usual" between other things. But my new intervention is because of that: I am understanding from some comments above and from the Chanu question that innovation is something you can introduce as any other type of thing inside an organization (for example a new product). If that is the case please let me say that, in my humble opinion, that is not right. Innovation demmands to create an envirionment and that is a matter of two possible strategies: revolution or evolution. I have to be part of both strategies.Both worked in the initiatives I have participated. But Revolution are bloody. The best, in my opionion es evolution. But it is impossible to change the organization to a more innovative one if you do not understand that it depends on working with each individual first and mainly with the top management.

Sergio, don't apologize for participate, discussions were made for that.

From my point of view, the discussion post was unclear, and each of us understands and explained our opinion based on our experience or cultural background.

Innovation typically implies major change in process and as such, preparing the organization for such change is critical before anything else - raising awareness, gaining alignment, asking for feedback too, so you know where the difficulties might exist.
If it is possible to introduce a small portion of the change to one team or one operation to gauge potential challenges with uptake, or catch missed risks of integration with other systems, this is always best before a major roll-out. It allows those introducing the change to tweak and improve the change plans to improve its success. I agree with Lori too, rolling go-lives of any change helps to manage support resources, as well as help spread success stories to other departments where the change is yet to come, etc. - all of which improves buy-in and success. Start with the groups that need it most and/or least resistant to making some changes.

Sergio, It has become a reactive kind of business in corporate world. Reactive to remain in context with the popular trend. This is why, the question arose, should be it a big bang or a gradual build up and I understand that there are positives and negatives on both sides of the equation.

Thanks for taking time to reply