Managing Strategic Innovation and Change: A Collection of...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 656 pages
• Published by: Oxford University Press, USA
• Edition: 2nd Edition March 11, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0195135784
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195135787
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 2.2 pounds

Reader Reviews
What we have here is an anthology of 42 articles that, collectively, examine a wide range of strategies and tactics for effective management of innovation as an organizational problem, not merely a technical problem. As co-editors Michael Tushman and Philip Anderson suggest in the Preface, "bringing an innovation to market involves more than creating something new. It is a strategic challenge because innovations succeed when they reach the right market at the right time with the right competitive positioning. It requires the management of change because innovations succeed when new ways of operating are aligned with new value propositions." I should add that Tushman and Anderson are also among the contributors. Others include Clayton Christensen, Stephen Jay Gould, Jim Collins, Jerry Porras, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Charles O'Reilly III, John Seely Brown, and Henry Chesbrough. Although the book was written primarily for use in business school courses, carefully selected portions of the material will also be of substantial interest and value to countless others (e.g. C-level executives) who are charged with determining how their own organization can most effectively respond to the perils and opportunities of change and innovation. It remains for each decision-maker to determine which articles are of greatest relevant to her or his organization. The 42 readings are carefully organized within seven sections. Of greatest interest to me are Section V ("Knowledge, Learning, and Intellectual Capital") because its contributors explore the problem of accelerating the rate at which an organization generates and deploys knowledge, and, Section VII (""Executive Leadership and Managing Innovation and Change") because its contributors explore focus on the essential organizational component that galvanizes all others: leadership. Here are two brief excerpts that correctly indicate the quality of content that is consistent throughout all of the articles. On why so many strong, capably managed firms stumble when faced with particular types of technological change: "While many scholars see the issue primarily as an issue of [begin italics] technological competence [end italics], we assert that at a deeper level; it may be an issue of [begin italics] investment [end italics]. We have observed that when competence was lacking but impetus from customers to develop that competence was sufficiently strong, established firms successfully led their industries in developing the competencies required for sustaining technological change. Importantly because sustaining technologies address the interests of established firms' existing customers, we saw that technological change could be achieved without strategy change." Clayton M. Christensen and Joseph L. Bower, "Customer Power, Strategic Investment, and the Failure of Leading Firms" On building a culture that supports constant mindfulness and experimentation: "It isn't sufficient to generate new ideas now and then. Your company - or more likely a part of it - needs to be a place that generates and tests many disparate ideas. It should be an arena, a constant and constructive contest, where the best ideas win. Will these ideas about innovation ever look anything but weird to the majority of managers? Probably not, because most companies will always devote more time, people, and money to exploiting old ideas than to exploring new ones. Exposure effects being what they are, managing for creativity will always require a conscious effort. However, if you read `Dilbert' or have friends in the arts, you know that exposure effects cut both ways. To people who spend their days doing creative work, the way that most companies are managed seems just as weird." Robert I. Sutton, "The Weird Rules of Creativity" Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson's Enterprise Architecture as Strategy as well as Thomas Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, Adrian Slywotsky's The Upside, and Richard Ogle's Smart World. Comment | | (Report this)