Makers

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Tony Davila, Marc J. Epstein

" It's a paradox: as big companies get better at achieving operational excellence, actual breakthroughs seem to decrease. It's the scrappy little startups, with comparatively tiny budgets, that continue to be founts of innovation. Why is it that as industry leaders get better at what they do, they get worse at innovation? By conducting deep research within companies as diverse as Apple, Google, Pfizer, General Motors, Nike, and Sony, the authors have found the answer: the very pursuit of operational excellence--that is, making one's existing business as efficient as it can be--blinds managers to the kinds of disruptive business model changes vital for innovation. These changes could threaten all that hard work. It's why Nokia famously killed its smart phone--the company was too invested in "dumb phones." Nothing less than a complete redesign and rethinking of the corporation--down to how accountants capture innovation costs and overhead--is necessary to get companies moving again. The authors' new model, "the startup corporation," marries the strengths of corporate scale to the nimbleness of entrepreneurs. For a model of the new startup corporation, the authors return again and again to Apple, which doesn't have the usual corporate structure and accounting systems. Not every company can be an Apple, but all companies can learn to break the bonds of operational thinking if they'll take the authors' lessons to heart"-- "From the bestselling authors of Making Innovation Work (30,000 copies sold and translated into ten languages) comes a book that questions everything about how organizations innovate. Key takeaway: classical business management and corporate structures by their very nature will kill, not create, breakthroughs. The authors describe a new kind of organization--the startup corporation--that will make established companies as innovative as startups"--

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Michael J.C. Martin

"While innovation may be the lifeblood of technology based industry, it does not guarantee success to the individual firm within it. The ability to bring useful and desirable products to market in a timely, cost-effective fashion requires the unique talents of managers armed with an arsenal of modern principles and methodologies specifically geared to the technology invention and innovation process. But even in technology based firms, many managers have only scant technical background, while scientists and engineers may have little or no management training. And courses on managing technology based firms are currently taught only in a meager handful of universities." "This book grew out of Michael J.C. Martin's experiences developing and teaching courses in managing technological innovation-entrepreneurship to business, engineering, and science students. It provides a dynamic framework within which managers from virtually any professional background can develop efficient, highly productive work systems guaranteed to maximize a high-tech firm's competitive edge. Throughout, the emphasis is on leveraging a company's strategic advantage. To that end, the author provides a host of "battle-tested" tools of the trade, including technology development programs, industry- and market-specific strategic plans, R & D project planning techniques, socioeconomic forecasting and market analysis techniques, and techniques for matching company capabilities with customer and product demands." "All of the tools and techniques presented are applicable to the development of a broad range of products, from small high-tech consumer goods to large and complex systems such as aircraft and heavy weapons technology." "An indispensable survival tool in today's hypercompetitive international high-tech marketplace, Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Technology Based Firms is must reading for industrial engineers, project managers, and R & D managers."--Jacket.

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Watts Wacker and Ryan Matthews

"Deviance is nothing more than a marked separation from the norm and is the source of innovation, the kind of breakthrough thinking that creates new markets and tumbles traditional ones. Positive deviation is an inexhaustible font of new ideas, products, and services. It's the source of all creative thinking and dynamic new market development and ultimately the basis of all incremental profit.". "The Deviant's Advantage describes how deviance proceeds along a traceable trajectory from the Fringe, where it originates but has zero commercial potential; to the Edge, where word of mouth creates a limited audience; to the Realm of the Cool, where the buzz and market momentum really start to build; to the Next Big Thing, where demand is honed and intensifies; finally landing at Social Convention, the heart of the mass market."--BOOK JACKET.

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Shane Greenstein

"In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from entrepreneurs and iconoclasts who were outside the mainstream--and how the commercialization of the Internet was by no means a foregone conclusion at its outset. Shane Greenstein traces the evolution of the Internet from government ownership to privatization to the commercial Internet we know today. This is a story of innovation from the edges. Greenstein shows how mainstream service providers that had traditionally been leaders in the old-market economy became threatened by innovations from industry outsiders who saw economic opportunities where others didn't--and how these mainstream firms had no choice but to innovate themselves. New models were tried: some succeeded, some failed. Commercial markets turned innovations into valuable products and services as the Internet evolved in those markets. New business processes had to be created from scratch as a network originally intended for research and military defense had to deal with network interconnectivity, the needs of commercial users, and a host of challenges with implementing innovative new services. How the Internet Became Commercial demonstrates how, without any central authority, a unique and vibrant interplay between government and private industry transformed the Internet."--Jacket.