I've been conducting a series of interviews with experts from both the business and academic ranks here at the Burning Questions conference. While each person has had something of real value to contribute to the innovation conversation, one individual turned the whole discussion on its ear.

Umair Haque is the principal of a small consulting firm called Bubblegeneration; he also writes a blog by the same name. When I asked Umair to name two things that all leaders must do to facilitate ongoing innovation in their companies, he told me, in essence, that I was asking the wrong question. Innovation won't rise out of a tweak to existing firm practices or culture, he said, but rather firms themselves must be reinvented -- or to use his term, need entirely new DNA -- in order for real innovation to take hold today. Haque says the innovation leaders -- Google, MySpace, and so on -- aren't organized like traditional companies and don't act like traditional companies, so they can generate new ideas and products at a rate that traditional companies cannot. What I understood him to say was that these firms were stitched out of a fabric of innovation -- that they have been built for the very purpose of generating and executing new ideas. That's a pretty far from the classic large Western company.

He then used a washing machine analogy to drive the point home. In a traditional company, if you took away management controls, the innovation spin cycle would slowly grind to a stop: without process and structure, people would not be able to move whatever ideas they have forward. At today's innovation leaders, however, a lack of controls would have precisely the opposite effect: the innovation machine would spin faster and faster as people were freed from organizational binds. That goes right to the DNA the company was built on.

What's your take? Can companies formed in previous generations come through with groundbreaking innovation today? Or has time passed them by?

MORE ON INNOVATION:
Innovation: The Classic Traps (HBR Article)
Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation (Hardcover)
Staying Ahead of Your Competition (HBR Article Collection)
Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape (Hardcover)