How to Innovate and Execute
Leaders already know that innovation calls for a different set of
activities, skills, methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership
approaches. And it is well understood that creating a new business and
optimizing an already existing one are two fundamentally different
management challenges. The real problem for leaders is doing both,
simultaneously. How do you meet the performance requirements of the
existing business--one that is still thriving--while dramatically
reinventing it? How do you envision a change in your current business
model before a crisis forces you to abandon it?
Innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan expands the leader's innovation tool
kit with a simple and proven method for allocating the organization's
energy, time, and resources--in balanced measure--across what he calls
"the three boxes"
- Box 1: The present--Manage the core business at peak profitability
- Box 2: The past--Abandon ideas, practices, and attitudes that could
inhibit innovation
- Box 3: The future--Convert breakthrough ideas into new products and
businesses
The three-box framework makes leading innovation easier because it gives
leaders a simple vocabulary and set of tools for managing and measuring
these different sets of behaviors and activities across all levels of
the organization. Supported with rich company examples--GE, Mahindra &
Mahindra, Hasbro, IBM, United Rentals, and Tata Consultancy
Services--and testimonies of leaders who have successfully used this
framework, this book solves once and for all the practical dilemma of
how to align an organization on the critical but competing demands of
innovation.
