Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organizational Effectiveness

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Category-busting activity is a classic innovation generation strategy but to do this, you need a firm base of categories to challenge or recombine. Without the old categories as reference points it's hard to recognise and place the innovation when it arrives. One of the five key attributes of innovation success, according to Everett Rogers, is compatibility – by which he means that the innovation can be matched to existing categories and understood sufficiently to support adoption, even if this is by comparison or contrast (Rogers, 1995: 224-34).

Cirque du Soleil is a classic example of innovation by category busting. It advertises itself as circus, but circus reinvented. Despite its title, it lacks many of the traditional features of circus - the ring format, the animals, the big name acts. 'It is not quite a circus and not quite opera or theater either, but takes elements from them all' (Williamson, 2002: 3). In some respects, it differs from all three - in the anonymity of its performers, for example. It is successful not simply because it breaks traditional categories, but by self-consciously displaying its category busting as innovation. The resonances of circus, street performance, theatre, opera and ballet are all superbly put on show to be appreciated || as a sophisticated blend. Case-Study