The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge (Harvard Business Review (Hardcover))

Eric D. Beinhocker

Eric D. Beinhocker's "The Origin of Wealth" critiques a neoclassical economics and presents a new school of economic thought called "Complexity Economics". The book starts off by presenting the history of economic thinking and the rise of the neoclassical paradigm - the current dominating economic methodology that uses complex mathematical models and assumes perfect rationality, equilibrium, etc. Beinhocker critiques Neoclassicism for some of the reasons that I heavily disagree with it-it involves too much math, assumes perfect rationality, and relies on faulty economic constructs (equilibrium is an example). In short, the theories of Neoclassicism are not in one respect consonant with reality. However, after he critiques Neoclassicism he begins a very long, long, long explanation of his complexity economics. Most of the following chapters are descriptions of "complexity economics" and how while mainstream mathematical formulas are erroneous, his computer lab scenarios provide insight into how humans behave.In my opinion he seems to make the same mistakes that he accuses Neoclassicism of doing, using complex formulas and computerized equations as data for human action and how they behave. He simply provides a new perspective but doesn't really build on it because in reality it requires a vast pile of mathematical research and more outlandish computer models that haven't been concocted yet. He even seem to support Keynesian economics, a school of thought that can be... Lire plus…

Tony Davila; Marc J Epstein; Robert D Shelton

Making Innovation Work presents a formal innovation process proven to work at HP, Microsoft and Toyota, to help ordinary managers drive top and bottom line growth from innovation. The authors have drawn on their unsurpassed innovation consulting experience — as well as the most thorough review of innovation research ever performed. They'll show what works, what doesn't, and how to use management tools to dramatically increase the payoff from innovation investments. Learn how to define the right strategy effective innovation; how to structure an organization to innovate best; how to implement management systems to assess ongoing innovation; how to incentivize teams to deliver, and much more. This book offers the first authoritative guide to using metrics at every step of the innovation process — from idea creation and selection through prototyping and commercialization. Lire plus…

Frans Johansson

Why do so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience? Charles Darwin was a geologist when he proposed the theory of evolution. And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs.Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples of how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations. Lire plus…

Robert Simons

Based on a ten-year examination of control systems in over 50 U.S. businesses, this book broadens the definition of control and establishes a critical bridge between the disciplines of strategy and accounting and control. In addition to the more traditional diagnostic control systems, Simons identifies three new control systems that allow strategic change: belief systems that communicate core values and provide inspiration and direction, boundary systems that frame the strategic domain and define the limits of freedom, and interactive systems that provide flexibility in adapting to competitive environments and encourage organizational learning. These four control systems, according to Simons, will provide managers with the basic levers for pursuing strategic objectives. Levers of Control offers a radical new way of thinking about strategy implementation, outlining new ways to balance the tension between top-down direction and bottom-up creativity, and between experimentation and efficiency. Lire plus…

Anil K. Gupta, Vijay Govindarajan, Haiyan Wang; Foreword By Jeffrey E. Garten

Anil K. Gupta, Vijay Govindarajan, and Haiyan Wang are among the most distinguished experts in the field of globalization. In The Quest for Global Dominance they present the lessons from their twenty-year study of over two hundred corporations. They argue that, in order for a company to create and maintain its position as a globally dominant player, executives must ensure that their company leads its industry in the following four essential tasks: Identifying market opportunities worldwide and pursuing them by establishing the necessary presence in all key markets Converting global presence into global competitive advantage by identifying and developing the opportunities for value creation that global presence offers Cultivating a global mindset by viewing cultural and geographic diversity as an opportunity, not just a challenge Leveraging the rise of emerging markets especially China and India to transform the company's growth prospects, global cost structure, and pace of innovation Lire plus…

Harvard Business School Press

When it comes to project management, success lies in the details. This book walks managers through every step of project oversight from start to finish. Thanks to the book's comprehensive information on everything from planning and budgeting to team building and after-project reviews, managers will master the discipline and skills they need to achieve stellar results without wasting time and money. "The Harvard Business Essentials Series" is for managers at all levels but is especially relevant for new managers. It offers on-the-spot guidance, coaching, and tools on the most relevant topics in business. Each book includes the critical information that managers need on a given topic - from budgeting to hiring to communication to strategy - and offers interactive tools and worksheets that translate advice into action. Providing ready answers to day-to-day issues, these guides make sound, trusted mentoring advice available whenever managers need it. Other Books in the "HBE Series" are: "Managing Change and Transition"; "Hiring and Keeping the Best People"; "Finance for Managers Business"; "Communications"; "Innovation"; and "Negotiation." Lire plus…

Roberto Verganti

Until now, the literature on innovation has focused either on radical innovation pushed by technology or incremental innovation pulled by the market. In Design-Driven Innovation: How to Compete by Radically Innovating the Meaning of Products, Roberto Verganti introduces a third strategy, a radical shift in perspective that introduces a bold new way of competing. Design-driven innovations do not come from the market; they create new markets. They don't push new technologies; they push new meanings.It's about having a vision, and taking that vision to your customers. Think of game-changers like Nintendo's Wii or Apple's iPod. They overturned our understanding of what a video game means and how we listen to music. Customers had not asked for these new meanings, but once they experienced them, it was love at first sight.But where does the vision come from? With fascinating examples from leading European and American companies, Verganti shows that for truly breakthrough products and services, we must look beyond customers and users to those he calls "interpreters" - the experts who deeply understand and shape the markets they work in.Design-Driven Innovation offers a provocative new view of innovation thinking and practice. Lire plus…

Jeffrey H. Dyer; Hal B. Gregersen; Clayton M. Christensen

Are you the next Steve Jobs?You could be as innovative and impactful—if you can change your behaviors to improve your creative impact.In The Innovator’s DNA, authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and bestselling author Clayton Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution) build on what we know about disruptive innovation to show how individuals can develop the skills necessary to move progressively from idea to impact.By identifying behaviors of the world’s best innovators—from leaders at Amazon and Apple to those at Google, Skype, and Virgin Group—the authors outline five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting.Once you master these competencies (the authors provide a self assessment for rating your own innovator’s DNA), the authors explain how you can generate ideas, collaborate with colleagues to implement them, and build innovation skills throughout your organization to sharpen its competitive edge. That innovation advantage can translate into a premium in your company’s stock price—an innovation premium—which is possible only by building the code for innovation right into your organization’s people, processes, and guiding philosophies. Practical and provocative, The Innovator’s DNA is an essential resource for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovative prowess. Lire plus…

Teresa Amabile, Steven Kramer

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It’s their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives—consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly.As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees’ inner work lives. But it’s forward momentum in meaningful work—progress—that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day.The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts—events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy—and (2) nourishers—interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality.Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people’s performance. Lire plus…

Moore, Geoffrey A

Geoffrey Moore is one of the most respected and bestselling names in business books. In his widely quoted Crossing the Chasm, he identified and addressed the greatest challenge facing new ventures. Now he's back with a book for established businesses that need to learn how to adapt—or suffer the slow declines into marginalized performance that have characterized so many Fortune 500 icons in recent years.Deregulation, globalization, and e-commerce are exerting unprecedented pressures on company profits. In this new economic ecosystem, companies must dramatically differentiate from their direct competitors—or risk declining performance and eventual extinction. But how do companies choose the right innovation strategy? Or overcome internal inertia that resists the kind of radical commitments needed to truly set the company's offers apart?Illustrating his arguments with more than one hundred examples and a full-length case study based on his unprecedented access to Cisco Systems, Moore shows businesses how to meet today's Darwinian challenges, whether they're producing commodity products or customized services. For companies whose competitive differentiation to the marketplace is still effective, he demonstrates how innovations in execution can help boost productivity, whether a company is competing in a growth market, a mature market, or even a declining market. For companies in danger of succumbing to competitive pressures, he shows how to overcome inertia by engaging the... Lire plus…

Moore, Geoffrey A

Inside the Tornado is the bestselling guide to the high-stakes world of high tech. Extending his investigation (in Crossing the Chasm) of the life cycle of new technology-based products, Geoffrey A. Moore provides useful guidelines for moving products beyond early adopters and into the lucrative mainstream market. Lire plus…

Tom Kelley With Jonathan Littman

The author of the bestselling __The Art of Innovation__ reveals the strategies IDEO, the world-famous design firm, uses to foster innovative thinking throughout an organization and overcome the naysayers who stifle creativity. The role of the devil's advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the A__nthropologist—__the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the __Cross-pollinator__ who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the __Hurdler__, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation. Filled with engaging stories of how companies like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, Cargill and Samsung have incorporated IDEO's thinking to transform the customer experience, THE TEN FACES OF INNOVATION is an extraordinary guide to nurturing and sustaining a culture of continuous innovation and renewal. Lire plus…

Ramanujam, Madhavan; Tacke, Georg

"Surprising rules for successful monetization Innovation is the most important driver of growth. Today, more than ever, companies need to innovate to survive. But successful innovation--measured in dollars and cents--is a very hard target to hit. Companies obsess over being creative and innovative and spend significant time and expense in designing and building products, yet struggle to monetize them: 72% of innovations fail to meet their financial targets--or fail entirely. Many companies have come to accept that a high failure rate, and the billions of dollars lost annually, is just the cost of doing business. Monetizing Innovations argues that this is tragic, wasteful, and wrong. Radically improving the odds that your innovation will succeed is just a matter of removing the guesswork. That happens when you put customer demand and willingness to pay in the driver seat--when you design the product around the price. It's a new paradigm, and that opens the door to true game change: You can stop hoping to monetize, and start knowing that you will. The authors at Simon Kucher know what they're talking about. As the world's premier pricing and monetization consulting services company, with 800 professionals in 30 cities around the globe, they have helped clients ranging from massive pharmaceuticals to fast-growing startups find success. In Monetizing Innovation, they distil the lessons of thirty years and over 10,000 projects into a practical, nine-step approach. Whether you... Lire plus…

Clayton M. Christensen, L J Ganser, Don Leslie

The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller, innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership. Read this international bestseller to avoid a similar fate.Clayton Christensen—who authored the award-winning Harvard Business Review article “How Will You Measure Your Life?”—explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says a successful company with established products WILL get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Sharp, cogent, provocative, and one of the most influential business books of all time—The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager or entrepreneur should be without. Lire plus…

Henry Mason, David Mattin, Maxwell Luthy, Delia Dumitrescu, Alexander Osterwalder

Trend-Driven Innovation Beat accelerating customer expectations. Every business leader, entrepreneur, innovator, and marketer wants to know where customers are headed. The problem? The received wisdom on how to find out is wrong. In this startling new book, the team at TrendWatching share a powerful, counter-intuitive truth: to discover what people want next, stop looking at customers and start looking at businesses. That means learning how to draw powerful insights from the way leading brands and disruptive startups--from Apple to Uber, Chipotle to Patagonia--redefine customer expectations. Sharing the secrets that have led thousands of the world's most successful brands and agencies to rely on TrendWatching for over a decade, Trend-Driven Innovation is the book that will reconfigure your view of the business world forever. You'll learn: How to spot emerging trends using three crucial building blocks, and how to recognize the expectation gaps that herald opportunity. Why most professionals focus on precisely the wrong trends and innovations, and how to avoid this. How to turn trends and insights into innovations that customers will love. Amid the endless change that defines today's business environment, opportunity is everywhere. Highly practical, and featuring real-world examples from around the world, Trend-Driven Innovation is the actionable, battle-tested manual that will enable you harness those opportunities time after time. Setting you up to build an... Lire plus…

Ross Baird, Steve Case

**Our innovation economy is broken. But there’s good news: The ideas that will solve our problems are hiding in plain sight.** While big companies in the American economy have never been more successful, entrepreneurial activity is near a 30-year low. More businesses are dying than starting every day. Investors continue to dump billions of dollars into photo-sharing apps and food-delivery services, solving problems for only a wealthy sliver of the world’s population, while challenges in health, food security, and education grow more serious. In __The Innovation Blind Spot__, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ross Baird argues that the innovations that truly matter don’t see the light of day—for reasons entirely of our own making. A handful of people in a handful of cities are deciding, behind closed doors, which entrepreneurs get a shot to succeed. And most investors are what Baird calls “two-pocket thinkers”—artificially separating their charitable work from their day job of making a profit. The resulting system creates rising income inequality, stifled entrepreneurial ambition, social distrust, and political uncertainty. Our innovation problem makes all our other problems harder to solve. In this book, Baird demonstrates how and where to find better ideas by lifting up people, places, and industries that are often overlooked. What’s more, Baird ultimately outlines how to create long-term success through “one-pocket thinking”—eliminating the blind spot that separates... Lire plus…