Innovation in Travel Distribution: No Silver Bullets

Summary

Many books and articles have been written on the topic of innovation in business. Rather than compiling best practices from the academic and consulting gurus, this article shares best practices and lessons learned when Bob Offutt ran Sabre Labs, the applied R&D unit of Sabre Holdings. Mr. Offutt founded Sabre Labs in 1996 and ran it until 2002.
It was an innovation machine ending up with 14 U.S. patents. The team traveled the world evangelizing the future of travel in the digital age. Many of today’s travel innovations such as merchandising, long tail content and boarding passes on cell phones were prototyped by Sabre Labs. This article presents a summary of Bob's insights.