Boston.com - Customer demand drives innovation alliances Although the title of this article by the Globe's Robert Weisman is on how consumer demand is driving innovation - the real focus of the underlying basis for this story - Forrester's recent report on 'Innovation Networks' is the real juice here as it taps into an emerging trend whereby companies are learning to expand their innovation capabilities beyond the immediate domain of their internal enterprise, and are looking around to other sources for ideas and innovation capacity to help them compete. Be it via outsourcing to India and China, or collaborating on innovations with customers and suppliers - Corporations are learning to balance internal and external innovation to come up with their competitive advantage and get products to market faster.