Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution
By burying their titular 10 rules in a small final chapter, Govindarajan and Trimble commit the first deadly sin of business writing: ambiguity. Before that, readers can be forgiven for believing there are only three fundamental principles for stewarding innovative projects within established companies: forgetting, borrowing and learning. TheFast Companycolumnists, who cofounded a leadership institute at Dartmouth's business school, argue that most companies do not understand how to foster a genuinely experimental environment. Judging the new company ("NewCo") by the performance standards of the core company ("CoreCo") won't inspire change, hence the need to forget. But NewCo does have to borrow selectively from CoreCo's best resources in order to gain the foothold necessary for success, and it must learn from its experiences rather than stick blindly to its earliest plans. Govindarajan and Trimble use case studies from four industries, including manufacturing and online media. The examples, supplemented by numerous figures that reduce ideas to clear bullet points, get their points across effectively, but some readers may grow impatient waiting for the promised rules to turn up.(Dec. 1)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.