Excellent execution: innovation, policy and regulation

THE successful execution of a plan to bring a radical or disruptive innovation (product or service) to market must include a strategy to influence policy and regulation. Why? Because innovation is always followed by regulation. Before there were mobile phones, there were no regulations about not texting and driving. The regulations necessarily follow the introduction of the innovative product or service because policy makers do not create regulations for products or services they have not yet imagined. (Hereafter, I'll simply refer to innovative products, but what I say is equally applicable to services.) And if your firm brings an innovative product to market, only to have its use curtailed by onerous regulations, then your firm has not successfully executed on its plan to bring that product to market. This article describes how you can influence policy and regulation.