Sustaining Innovation: Prolonging Today’s Profits with Yesterday’s Bold Ideas

Sustaining innovations are the relentless improvements necessary to build on past successes. They make existing products better, faster, or cheaper in the eyes of customers by offering new features and functionality. Honey Nut Cheerios, Boeing’s stretch version of the 767, and the all-new Honda Accord are all examples of sustaining innovation.

In addition to providing new product benefits, sustaining innovation protects customer investments, builds employee morale, and helps satisfy investor demands. While sustaining innovations are often developed in response to competitive threats, many often wind up being leapfrog advancements, nonetheless. The zip-locking-style plastic sandwich bag brought to market by Dow Chemical was a sustaining innovation patterned after a pencil bag developed more than a decade earlier. The zip bag eventually overtook flip sandwich bags and now dominates the market.