Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation: How Companies Can Seize Opportunities in the Face of Technological Change

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 253 pages
• Published by: Harvard Business School Press May 1994
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0875843425
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0875843421
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

From Library Journal
Utterback (management and engineering, MIT) has compiled an impressive volume, combining considerable research with case histories that chart the ebb and flow of assembled and nonassembled products through the American marketplace. Theory is used in conjunction with interesting descriptions of the history of such innovations as the typewriter, the light bulb, and plate glass to demonstrate the impact of innovation in such industries as word processing, automobiles, and super computers. Weaving together research and examples, Utterback persuasively argues that companies should not always sacrifice long-term research and development projects for the sake of immediate financial reward. He shows that overly conservative practices have often left giant companies on the outside looking in when new, radical innovations have made more traditional processes and products obsolete or irrelevant. This is an important study on the role innovation plays in manufacturing and technology. Recommended for academic and greater public library business collections.
Randy Abbott, Univ. of Evansville Libs., Ind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Author explores the rich history of innovation by skillfully applying in-sights from the past to develop a framework for the present, illustrating how innovation enters an industry and how new and old players wrestle for dominance. DLC: Organizational change - Management.

Reader Reviews
Utterback explains "how companies can seize opportunities in the face of technological change." There are dozens (hundreds?) of other books on the same subject, notably those written by Geoffrey A. Moore. I rate this book so highly because it is exceptionally well-organized and well-written, because it examines several offbeat subjects (eg the development of the typewriter and the evolution of the typewriter industry, the development of the incandescent electric light), and because Utterback focuses so intensely -- and so effectively -- on real-world situations in which the "dynamics of innovation" are manifest. This book is very informative but also great fun to read. (Those who enjoy it as much as I did are urged to read both The History of Invention and The Lever of Riches.) Chapter 4 revisits the the dynamics of the innovation model (Figure 1-1) and then in Chapter 5, Utterback shifts his attention to developments within the plate glass manufacturing industry. In Chapter 6, he examines the innovation differences between assembled and nonassembled products. Subsequent chapters sustain the discussion of "the power of innovation in the creation of an industry" and then, in Chapter 9, Utterback "draws together some of the lessons of earlier chapters and academic research to consider the relationship between the behaviors and strategies of firms with respect to technological innovation and long-term survival." He concludes his book (in Chapter 10) by addressing "the perennial management issue of how corporations can renew their technology, products, and processes as a basis for continued competitive vitality." It is obvious to all of us that even the strongest product and business strategy will eventually be overturned by technological change. Ours is an age in which change is the only constant. Therefore, as Utterbach explains so carefully and so eloquently, the challenge is to accept the inevitability of change which results from technological innovation ("discontinuities") and to sustain a commitment to cope effectively with such change. Only such a commitment "will win the day."