science

Innovation butterfly

Innovation butterfly is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Innovation butterfly rather than just read about it. In short: The innovation butterfly is a metaphor that describes how seemingly minor perturbations (disturbances or changes) to project plans in a system connecting markets, demand, product features, and a firm's capabilities can steer the project, or an entire portfolio of projects, down an irreversible path in terms of technology and market evolution. Origins The metaphor was developed by researchers Anderson and Joglekar.

Key takeaways

Innovation butterfly belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Innovation butterfly to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Innovation butterfly from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The innovation butterfly is a metaphor that describes how seemingly minor perturbations (disturbances or changes) to project plans in a system connecting markets, demand, product features, and a firm's capabilities can steer the project, or an entire portfolio of projects, down an irreversible path in terms of technology and market evolution.

Origins The metaphor was developed by researchers Anderson and Joglekar. It was conceived as a specific instance of the more general 'butterfly effect' encountered in chaos theory.

How it works The innovation butterfly arises because many innovation systems are made up of a large number of elements that interact with each other via several non-linear feedback loops containing embedded delays, thus constituting a complex system. Perturbations can come from decisions made within the firm or from those made by its competitors, or they can result from external forces such as government legislation or environmental regulations, or unexpected spikes in the price of oil. How the innovation system evolves as a result of the innovation butterfly can lead ultimately to an innovative firm's success or failure. Complex systems, in domains such as physics, biology, or sociology, are known to be prone to both path dependence and emergent behavior. What makes the behavior of the innovation butterfly different is market selection, along with biases in individual and group decision making within distributed innovation settings, which may influence the emergent behavior. Furthermore, managers in most fields of business endeavor to reduce uncertainty in order to better manage risk. In innovation settings, however, because success is based upon creativity, managers must actively embrace uncertainty. This leads to a management conundrum because innovation managers and management systems must encourage the potential for a butterfly effect but then must also learn how to cope with its aftermath. How innovation butterflies are 'chased' is highly managerially relevant. Most butterflies end up 'merely' consuming a considerable amount of time and resources within a project, or for an innovation portfolio, within a firm. However, some butterflies can also unleash regime-altering emergent outcomes within an entire industry segment. Moreover, once these emergent outcomes begin to mature, and in some instances lead to disruptive innovations, they become extremely difficult to manage, Hence, shaping the innovation system before potential innovation butterfly's effects completely emerge is critical.

See also Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity Path dependence

References

Research literature

Books Anderson, Edward G. Jr. and Nitin R. Joglekar (2012). The Innovation Butterfly: Managing Emergent Opportunities and Risks During Distributed Innovation, Springer (Understanding Complex Systems Series). Online version Archived 2013-11-13 at the Wayback Machine Christensen, Clayton M. (1997). The Innovator's Dilemma : When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Harvard Business Press.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Innovation butterfly

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Innovation butterfly claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Innovation butterfly before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Innovation butterfly ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Innovation butterfly

In research: Innovation butterfly appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Innovation butterfly in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Innovation butterfly is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Chaos theory, Complex systems theory, Economic problems, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Innovation butterfly outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Innovation butterfly in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Innovation butterfly means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Innovation butterfly out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Innovation butterfly in simple terms?

Why does Innovation butterfly matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Innovation butterfly?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Innovation butterfly.