Last week we conducted a mini poll to see how many of you have skunkworks teams at work. Turns out, with the exception of one, none of us formally have skunkworks teams, or a team of people whose sole job is to come up with new and innovative products or services.

The reason I wanted to know is because I’ve been reading a lot about skunkworks teams and why they don’t work, in any sense of the term. The example that resonated with me the most was one from Harvard Business Review…

“The Razr phone is a case in point. It was developed by a small group within Motorola, with strong support from CEO Ed Zander and CMO Geoffrey Frost. Frost noted that company research showed that there was a total world market of two million units for a $499 phone, the most expensive phone that anyone had yet sold. The conventional thinking was that this would be a halo product for Motorola — glamorous but low-volume and money-losing.

Of course the Razr went on to become one of the biggest selling phones of all time, selling over two million units in the U.K. alone. The traditional market research relied on historical precedent, so it missed an inflection point occurring right then in 2004 when mobiles shifted from being utilitarian devices to fashion accessories. The Razr capitalized on that shift brilliantly, and catapulted Motorola from mobile phone has-been to powerhouse.” (more…)