Innovation @ Merage - UCI Paul Merage School of Business : Book Reviews, Strategy/Vision

The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation

Lynda Lawrence — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:24:00 GMT

By: Marty Neumeier: New Riders, 2009.

Despite its dreadful title, this little book is a gem. Neumeier explains why everyone should care about design (companies that win design awards have 100-200% higher returns, and must-have products are always because of good design). More important, he defines designers as everyone who makes something better, whether it’s an idea, a process or a product.

He also points out the difference between standard business thinking that measures “What is” and design thinking that posits “What could be.” Without the latter, he says, we’d all be driving the same cars and watching broadcast TV. As for getting these new ideas converted to reality, he has strong ideas about storytelling (good) and PowerPoint (bad).

Why should you care about design? Just substitute the words innovation or organizational change and you’ll see why his insights apply to just about everything you have on your to-do list for the next decade.

Definitely worth an hour of your time, I’d give it a 9.0 on the LL innovation meter. Recommended for managers, MBAs, and anyone interested in changing their organization’s status quo.

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It

Lynda Lawrence — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:49:00 GMT

By: Joshua Ramo: Little, Brown, 2009.

While it’s not strictly a business book, this is the best book for business that I’ve reviewed this year. It is, in fact, a whole new way of facing the future of any endeavor: Ramo suggests that the only way to deal with uncertainty is to accept that you can’t possibly predict anything.

He begins with an analogy from physics. When you methodically add single grains of sand to a pile, there is absolutely no way to tell which grain will cause an avalanche. Then, using examples from Google to Hizb’allah, he explains that no successful organization has a vision or strategic plan that can anticipate all the changes in a global and interconnected world. The successful ones, he says, are those that constantly adapt to change.

For most businesses, that attitude is too frightening to contemplate. Strategic planning, quarterly earnings projections, and overpaid executives are not guarantees of anything. Instead, he recommends that organizations think long-term, holistically and flexibly. It’s not innovation as a growth or survival strategy—it’s innovation as an organizational structure, a product and a philosophy.

This one gets a 9.8 on the LL innovation meter. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to be part of a viable organization in the next few decades. And if any of our nation’s political leaders have the time, it should be on their reading lists as well.

The Impossible Advantage: Winning the Competitive Game by Changing the Rules

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:14:00 GMT

By Andreas Buchholz, Wolfram Wordeman and Ned Wiley; John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

While I was playing Candyland with 5-year-old Ashlynn last fall, she drew a bad card that would have sent her back to the beginning of the game. Her reaction? “I know, let’s play the same game, but change the rules.” Which is exactly the way the authors define their Game Strategy: changing the rules of the game to your advantage--while you’re playing it.

They develop four strategies:
1. Redefining the measure of performance (DeBeers grading diamonds)
2. Redefining the market structure (Red Bull creates “energy drinks” to avoid comparison with tastier soft drinks)
3. Redefine the roles (lawyers changing “jealous aggressive husband kills wife” to “bad racist cops frame innocent black guy OJ Simpson”)
4. Challenge the existing business model (dolls look like babies, dolls are fashion models, now dolls are counter-cultural lifestyle icons).

Examples range from German broadcast networks to pharmaceuticals, the iPod to outsourcing and all support the premise of changing the rules. Their four divisions, however, were hard to remember, and as practical tools for innovation, not as applicable as Blue Ocean Strategy or Christiansen’s Disruptive Innovation.

I’d give it a 7 on the LL innovation meter, thought provoking for someone who wants to break into a mature market or break out of the pack in a competitive market space.

What Would Google Do?

admin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:07:00 GMT

By Jeff Jarvis; Collins Business, 2009

Take everything you know about business, turn it upside down, and that’s pretty much what Google is doing. If conventional wisdom suggests that people should pay for your product, Google’s is free. If you might support that weird business strategy by running ads on your front page, Google’s is absolutely pristine.

In Jarvis’s view, every business has a lot to learn from one of the few profitable companies in these turbulent times. He starts with some counterintuitive Google premises: give control away, make mistakes often, let your customers be your ads, niches are more profitable than mass markets, everything is public, get out of the way.

The last half of the book is where it gets interesting--rethinking the business models of major industries in the Google way: manufacturing, real estate, communications, airlines, insurance, education. There are some provocative ideas, and at the very least, some challenges to long-held assumptions that are worth pondering.

I’d give it an 8 on the LL innovation meter, good for anyone who makes strategic decisions or wants to start the next Google.

Lynda Lawrence is an innovation consultant with Ideaworks Consulting. She teaches Strategic Innovation and Design Management at the Merage School at UCI, and is an advisor to the Beall Center.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

admin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:03:00 GMT

By Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson; McGraw Hill 2008

Innovation guru Christensen has taken his principles of innovation and applied them to one of the most intractable systems in the country—our public schools. And while this specific topic won’t appeal much to people outside the educational system, plus active parents, some of his thoughts have broad application in change management for any organization.

First, he concludes that disruptive change never comes from within an established and successful organization: only those that can afford to create totally separate entities with totally different rules can hope to innovate. Second, unless everyone in an organization has the same goals, self-interest, language, and agreement on how to achieve those goals, the traditional leadership tools—vision statements, charismatic leadership, incentives—more often result in eye-rolling than significant progress.

Finally, because everyone has different learning styles, people with expertise in a topic may the least able to teach others who don’t have the expertise (think about programmers teaching computer-phobic English majors). If you’re attempting innovation that requires new learning, this should help you design different teaching tools for different people.

On the LL Innovation Meter, I’d give it a 7 for general audiences, an 8 for people in education or training.

Lynda Lawrence is an innovation consultant with Ideaworks Consulting. She teaches Strategic Innovation and Design Management at the Merage School at UCI, and is an advisor to the Beall Center.

The Game Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth With Innovation

Lynda Lawrence — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:26:00 GMT

By A.G. Lafley, Chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble and Ram Charan, co-author of Execution; Crown Business 2008

Review: While there are lots of books about innovative start-ups, there haven’t been many about turning around huge corporations—for the very good reason that few huge corporations have been able to refocus on innovation and succeed at it.

Lafley is, in fact, a game-changer, and this book is a step-by-step guidebook on how to drive growth through innovation. When he took over P & G less than a decade ago, the company was struggling to make its numbers. Today it has 23 brands worth more than a billion dollars each, productivity is up 85%, and sales growth and stock prices have doubled.

How did he do it? According to Lafley, innovation became the only strategy, and every structure, process and person in the company was set up to support it. He gives specific examples, including failures, to describe the process and the outcomes. Co-author Charan adds examples from other innovators, and they highlight their Connect & Develop program, which is the poster child for open innovation.

It’s a must-read for anyone who has encountered a corporate culture that’s resistant to change. It has facts, figures, approaches and the inspiration to encourage innovation anywhere.

I’d give this a 9.5 on the LL Innovation meter. Practical advice for CEOs and senior management.

Lynda Lawrence is an innovation consultant with Ideaworks Consulting. She teaches Strategic Innovation and Design Management at the Merage School at UCI, and is an advisor to the Beall Center.