According to Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google, not many companies are innovators in both technology and business. In order to be successful in technical innovation, says Page, you must understand the business and marketing side of the equation. 

Not only does innovation drive the economy, says JLABS CEO Judy Estrin, but it influences the very quality of our day-to-day life. However, Estrin believes real innovations need decades of institutional push and resources behind them to develop. Here she asserts that we've become too shortsighted and more risk averse when it comes to developing new technology, and that this cultural shift away from innovative breeding grounds is to our own long-term detriment. 

John Thompson states a company must never stop spending on innovation, even in challenging times. When Symantec's customers had no way to measure the effectiveness of the security technology they deployed, the company chose, amidst a difficult period, to spend a large percentage of revenue to build a portfolio of tools that would become industry standards.