The difficulty of making a difference. (WIP).

When jarring things occur in the industry--like the domestic automakers announcing things like job cuts and Frequent plant closing--you'd think that the responses to what is clearly a crisis for them would be something far more clever than offering rebates and temporarily shutting down plants for products that are moving about as well as that writer in Stephen King's Misery.

Arguably, tremendously difficult times call for tremendously innovative solutions, yet so far it seems as though even incremental improvements are a trying stretch for some of the manufacturing companies.

Which brings me to Radical Innovation: How Mature Companies Can Outsmart Upstarts by Richard Leifer, Christopher M. McDermott, Gina Colarelli O'Connor, Lois S. Peters, Mark P. Rice, and Robert W. Veryzer (Harvard Business School Press; $29.95; 272 pp). What the authors methodically lay out in a study of 12 radical innovation projects at 10 firms--companies including Air Products and Chemical Corp., OuPont, GE, and GM, not Starbucks and Amazon--could be helpful with regard to what automakers and suppliers are facing today--although it should be noted that these innovations aren't going to happen overnight. And I'm not convinced that they'll occur in any major way at any of the "mature" automakers.

While incremental innovation is about improvements in either cost or features of an existing product, the authors describe a "radical innovation" as "a product, process, or service with either unprecedented performance features or familiar features that offer potential for significant improvements in performance or cost." They go on to explain, "radical innovations create such a dramatic change in products, processes, or services that they transform existing markets or industries, or create new ones." I added the emphasis to those words. Think about them:

* Unprecedented

* Significant

* Dramatic

* Transform

These are important words, words that should be considered by every single person in an organization, no matter what she or he does. Is there anything that you or your company is working on right now that is unprecedented, that is exceptional in the context in which it will exist, something truly noteworthy, something that hasn't been done before or which has the potential to change the rules of the game? Or is it all a matter of hoping that a tweak here or an add-on there will make all the difference in the world?

If it is the latter, then know that there are other people at other companies who are not tied into your company's status quo: They'll be more than glad to make the brilliant shift that will make your product as popular as castor oil. Radical innovation is about risk. Which is why managers are generally not keen on pursing it. Describing "large established firms"--and isn't that a good description of auto?--they write, "They are bound up by their assets, their infrastructures, and their current business models." But competitors aren't necessarily similarly hog-tied by what may have worked in the past.

Radical Innovation explains and details the steps and the methods that are involved in creating a significant change; the authors are truly methodical; this is not a text that is heavy on the cliche followed by an exclamation point. They write, "Some breakthrough ideas are serendipitous. Most, however, are the consequence of extended efforts to accumulate in-depth technical knowledge and ad hoc approaches to enhance and work the idea."

And there is a good chance that the people involved in creating the radical innovation will be overlooked or shunned by managers and collegial peers who are more interested in things proceeding the way they have always done rather than in what is potentially a discontinuity in that status quo. After all, the authors explain, "Incremental innovation projects enjoy high organizational legitimacy. They are generally funded through normal budgetary allocation processes and are viewed as activities that will soon contribute to the bottom line. Radical innovation projects don't enjoy this legitimacy, or its advantages ... They will not contribute to the bottom line any time soon, if ever. They don't help with Job One--doing current activities cheaper, faster, and better." They do, however, have the potential of keeping the company solvent. But as the authors note, "According to the chief scientist on GM's hybrid vehicle project, operating business units are not opposed to new ideas, as long as they are new ideas th at don't require the operating units to do much that is new." They want "whoa!" not "wow!"

How strong can the resistance be? Well, the authors examined the endeavors of 12 "project champions." Of that group, "two threatened to quit, four actually quit, and two were fired." Leadership in this field is characterized by brilliance and backbone. The reward? Despite all of the trouble and travails that they experience, "radical innovators push ahead relying on intrinsic motivation. Their rewards came From their own sense of accomplishment tied to making progress in bringing something new, exciting, and valuable to the world." At the end of the day, there has to be a whole lot of satisfaction in that.