Conventional wisdom today says that to survive, companies must move beyond incremental, sustaining innovation and invest in some form of radical innovation. "Disrupt yourself or be disrupted!" is the relentless message company leaders hear. The Power of Little Ideas argues there's a third way that is neither sustaining nor disruptive. This low-risk, high-reward strategy is an approach to innovation that all company leaders should understand so that they recognize it when their competitors practice it and apply it when it will give them a competitive advantage. This distinctive approach has three key elements:

• It consists of creating a family of complementary innovations around a product or service, all of which work together to make that product more appealing and competitive
• The complementary innovations work together as a system to carry out a single strategy or purpose
• Crucially, unlike disruptive or radical innovation, innovating around a key product does not change the central product in any fundamental way