Big innovation
Innovation is different for big corporate companies than for small start-ups. While small companies struggle to find resources for innovation, big companies have enough resources however it needs to sustain an entire corporate company and the new direction needs to get incorporated in the workflows and structures currently available in the company, the primary reasons perhaps why the company wasn't innovative in the first place. Not an easy task and only a few companies worldwide succeeded in this mission.
Small innovation
On the opposite, start-ups can easily adopt new technologies and come up with new innovative new products however they often adopt a technology-centered-approach and at the time the product meets the market it is not really getting a lot of attention or applause. Perhaps potential consumers were not involved in the innovation-process, perhaps the targetmarket is not clearly defined or perhaps it is a lack of sales-channels. There benefit however is that they still have a very flexible company structure and can optimize their products, processes or workflows with relatively little effort.
Sum up
There is not one path of innovation for everyone. Every company will require there own kind of innovation path, every phase requires a different innovation path. And as such there is not one unique path to innovative succes.