If you're like most people, you bet your career and company on
innovation--because you must. Payback: Reaping the Rewards of
Innovation offers you a new way to think about and manage innovation
that will dramatically improve the odds of success.
Authors James Andrew and Harold Sirkin, senior partners in The Boston
Consulting Group, describe an approach to managing innovation based on
the concept of a cash curve--which tracks investment against time. They
ask the questions you need to ask: How much should you invest in a new
product or service? How fast should you push it to market? How quickly
can you get to optimal value? How much additional investment should you
pour into sustaining and building the product or service?
Payback offers you practical and economically sound advice on when to
pursue cash flow indirectly by first pursuing other benefits, such as
brand and knowledge. It also shows you how to reshape the cash curve by
using different business models--integrator, orchestrator, and
licenser--each of which balances risk and reward differently.
The authors then present a short list of decisions and activities that
you must make--not delegate--to achieve a high return on innovation. You
won't find facile answers in Payback--but you will find valuable
insights and practical guidance for mastering one of the most
challenging and critical business activities: innovation.
