In my recent post ‘Human resources and sustainable business growth’ I have outlined how technology replaced the human labour in the 20th century and how recently (AI) is trying to substitute managers’ ability to think.

While computers can undoubtedly replace the chores of repetitive and routine tasks, they will never be able to replace our human ability to think. Well, this until they create a machine that is better at forgetting rather than knowing - but that, I believe, will take another while.

For the time being, we rely on people to come up with new possibilities for value creation that drive sustainable business growth.

What I want to do here is explaining the link between two different types of innovation and comparing the work of the machine and the work of the manager.

Incremental innovation occurs mostly because of a technology breakthrough in the form of new materials available, new and more powerful hardware and software, new ways to connect, etc.

By adopting the latest best practices and technologies emerging in their industry, managers foster an incremental innovation journey in their organisation.