Reverse innovation: The action or process to use innovation methodology to build a solution that for various reasons already has been presumed.

(Thanks to Ash Maurya for enlightening conversations on this subject.)

It happens all the time: We already know what to build, or we’ve quite possibly built it already.

It’s not an elephant! (but it’s huge)

In the corporate world, reverse-innovation is usually rationalized as follows:

• We finally have time / budget to pursue that solution we’ve been dying to pursue for years
• Customers have asked for this solution since the beginning of mankind
• We need to develop this solution to support our market position / strategic objectives / visionary goals
• We have all this technology, and we don’t quite know what to do with it..
• We already know this solution will be a success (it’s freaking obvious)

Now, all we have to do, is to turn that thing into a successful product..

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