In their first book, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators, the authors provided a better model for executing disruptive innovation. They laid out a three-part plan for launching high-risk/high-reward innovation efforts: (1) borrow assets from the existing firms, (2) unlearn and unload certain processes and systems that do not serve the new entity, and (3) learn and build all new capabilities and skills.
In their study of the Ten Rules in action, Govindarajan and Trimble observed many other kinds of innovation that were less risky but still critical to the company's ongoing success. In case after case, senior executives expected leaders of innovation initiatives to grapple with forces of resistence, namely incentives to keep doing what the company has always done--rather than develop new competence and knowledge. But where to begin?
In this book, the authors argue that the most successful everyday innovators break down the process into six manageable steps:
1. Divide the labor
2. Assemble the dedicated team
3. Manage the partnership
4. Formalize the experiment
5. Break down the hypothesis
6. Seek the truth.
The Other Side of Innovation codifies this staged approach in a variety of contexts. It delivers a proven step-by-step guide to executing (launching, managing, and measuring) more modest but necessary innovations within large firms without disrupting their bread-and-butter business.
"The Other Side of Innovation is packed with clear recommendations about how to put its findings into practice ..."
Research Technology Management
"How do companies generate new ideas? And how do they turn those ideas into products? Hardly a week passes without someone publishing a book on the subject. Most are rubbish. But The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge is rather good In their new book [the authors] address two subjects that are usually given short shrift: established companies rather than start-ups and the
The Economist
"...a veritable how-to guide for CEOs and entrepreneurs."
