The strategy behind Proctor & Gamble’s innovation strategy has had my brain cycling about the future of specialization companies.

I think P&Gs strategy makes so much sense in our changing world that we’re going to see a number of other large companies start to follow. I think this means that we’re going to see a lot of specialization companies.

In the past companies have specialized along market, product, and competitive advantage pathways. Soon we’ll see a significant number of companies specializing along business stage/process pathways.

Innovation companies. Commercialization companies. Scale companies. Etc. etc.

Current solutions have focused on leveraging capabilities through markets:

“The next frontier is to tap the quiet genius that exists outside organizations — to attract innovations from people who are prepared to work with a company, even if they don’t work for it. An intriguing case in point is InnoCentive, a virtual research and development lab through which major corporations invite scientists and engineers worldwide to contribute ideas and solve problems they haven’t been able to crack themselves.”

Once the markets develop a little further it will provide easy access for these specialization companies to enter the market. That’s when they’ll grow in number. And that’s when things will get interesting.

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