Product Description

In today's ever-changing economic landscape, innovation has become even more of a key factor influencing strategic planning. This helpful volume will help the reader recognize and seize innovation opportunities.

The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series
The series is designed to bring today's managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, here are the leading minds and landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110598 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 222 pages

About the Author
Since 1984, Harvard Business School Press has been dedicated to publishing the most contemporary management thinking, written by authors and practitioners who are leading the way. Whether readers are seeking big-picture strategic thinking or tactical problem solving, advice in managing global corporations or for developing personal careers, HBS Press helps fuel the fire of innovative thought. HBS Press has earned a reputation as the springboard of thought for both established and emerging business leaders.

Customer Reviews

Why has this book not received more attention?
This is one in a series of several dozen volumes which comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarding experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section which usually includes suggestions of other sources which some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, we are provided with eight articles, in each of which the focus is on a specific aspect of innovation. For example, the first was co-authored by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. They explain how to create new market space. The core concepts were later developed in much greater depth (no pun intended) in their book, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. They are also the co-authors of a second article in this HBR anthology, "Knowing a Winning Business Idea When You See One." They offer three "tools": the buyer utility map (how attractive a new business idea will likely be), the price corridor of the mass (identifying a price which will unlock the greatest number of buyers), and the business tool model guide (a framework for determining whether and how a company can profitably deliver the new idea at the targeted price). Authors and co-authors of the other six articles explain how creative breakthroughs were achieved at 3M, how to build an innovation "factory," how to meet the challenge of disruptive change, how to discover points of differentiation, how to use the social sector as a beta site for business innovation, and finally, how and why "enlightened experimentation" offers the new imperative for innovation.

As a long-time subscriber to the Harvard Business Review, I am always curious to see which of the articles it publishes lead to books such as Kim and Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy. With Michael Overdorf, Clayton M. Christensen wrote "Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change." Its core concept is explored in The Innovator's Dilemma, The Innovator's Solution, and most recently in Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change, a current bestseller which Christensen co-authored with Erik A. Roth and Scott D. Anthony.

I highly recommend all of the various volumes which comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Every executive should own and frequently consult those which are most relevant, indeed essential to her or his own professional development. Years ago, then president of Harvard Derek Bok observed, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." The wisdom of that observation is especially true of attractively priced paperbacks such as this one.

My only regret is that Teresa M. Amabile's "How to Kill Creativity" was not included. However, fortunately, it is the lead article in a companion volume, Harvard Business Review on Breakthrough Thinking. For those who wish to explore her work in much greater depth, I strongly recommend Creativity in Context: Update to the Social Psychology of Creativity.