Shaping the Adaptive Organization: Landscapes, Learning, and Leadership in Volatile Times

Book Description

In the world's harshest environments, the key to survival is adaptation. It's a simple tenet of biological life, but when you apply it to the business realm, it can yield fresh insights and innovative ideas for companies struggling to survive.

In this intriguing new book, Harvard Business School Fellow William Fulmer does just that. Drawing on ideas and concepts of biology, he provides a broad, sweeping look at the business environment today--one characterized by unprecedented volatility and constant uncertainty.

And the book supplies concrete advice on how to build an adaptive organization that's able to embrace constant change and thrive in today's highly competitive business landscape. Readers learn how to:

* Pinpoint which landscape they operate in, recognize how rugged it is, and gauge their own fitness for survival * Cultivate learning, the root of adaptive organizations, through strategic planning and organizational design * Emulate the leadership skills needed for creating adaptive organizations, both start-ups and established companies * Discover why "the edge of chaos" is the best place to be.

SHAPING THE ADAPTIVE ORGANIZATION is packed with powerful examples of how adaptive companies are coping in an unpredictable, ever-changing environment--as well as eye-opening stories of how successful businesses can quickly find themselves in serious trouble.

Customer Reviews:

Insightful!.......2001-05-08

Author William E. Fulmer uses a biological analogy to discuss how organizations form and evolve in an environment that changes through co-evolution with other organizations. Organizations must be ready to learn, and need leaders who can help participants understand change and adapt to it. Though strategic planning can help, Fulmer emphasizes preparing for continual adaptation. His thoughtful, in-depth discussion draws on research from biologists, philosophers and various academic and business writers to create a biological model. He weaves in examples of businesses that have thrived or failed based on their ability or inability to adapt. When Fulmer veers away from his biological analogy, he starts to sound much like many of the other adapt-or-die prophets out there today, but nevertheless, we [...] recommend this solid presentation of a complex subject to executives, top managers and academics.

The changing face of business strategy.......2000-04-01

While the coverage of some topics is slightly more cursory than I might consider appropriate, I have found this book useful in prompting new thinking about how we fashion strategy in the new business environment. This is an excellent book for anyone who has interests in the new understandings we are gaining in the sciences, and is wondering about how to apply the new thinking to shaping organizations, old or new. While one may question some of the corporations selected as exemplars, among the real benefits of this book is that the author steps far out onto the limb to suggest practices in current organizations that illustrate key points in the development of an organization that can thrive in the tumult of our times. I believe that this book is a must read for people interested in the evolution of business strategy.

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Managing New Technology Development
William E. Souder , and J. Daniel Sherman
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0070597480

Book Description

New technology development starts with the generation of an idea. It ends with that idea's commercial applications: a new product or a new service in between is a complex sequence of stages demanding specialized management methods. With this in-depth survey, R&D, marketing, and engineering managers can learn from the foremost experts about the most successful, proven practices and techniques--for managing all the stages of new technology development. Each chapter focuses on the activities of a separate stage, using real-world industrial examples to illustrate applications of the product champion, parallel development methods, human factors in compressing cycle times, and other concepts.

Organizational Change and Innovation Processes: Theory and Methods for Research

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"The" book for those interested on Process Research

Organizational Change and Innovation Processes: Theory and Methods for Research
Marshall Scott Poole , Andrew H. Van de Ven , Kevin Dooley , and Michael E. Holmes
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation
Research on the Management of Innovation: The Minnesota Studies
Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research
The Innovation Journey
The Oxford Handbook of Innovation (Oxford Handbooks)

ASIN: 0195131983

Book Description

In a world of organizations that are in constant change scholars have long sought to understand and explain how they change. This book introduces research methods that are specifically designed to support the development and evaluation of organizational process theories. The authors are a group of highly regarded experts who have been doing collaborative research on change and development for many years.

Customer Reviews:

"The" book for those interested on Process Research.......2005-08-16

I highly recommend this book for its extensive and quality discussion of process research methodologies and philosophy. It's a MUST READ for those interested on the subject.

Networks of Innovation: Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet

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Networks of Innovation: Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet
Ilkka Tuomi
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Paperback

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The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies

ASIN: 019926905X

Book Description

Innovations are adopted when users integrate them in meaningful ways into existing social practices. Histories of major technological innovations show that often the creative initiative of users and user communities becomes the determining factor in the evolution of particular innovations. The evolutionary routes of the telephone, the Internet, the World Wide Web, email, and the Linux operating system all took their developers by surprise. Articulation of these technologies as meaningful products and systems was made possible by innovative users and unintended resources. Iterative and interactive models have replaced the traditional linear model of innovation during the last decade. Yet, heroic innovators and entrepreneurs, unambiguous functionality of products, and a focus on the up-stream aspects of innovation still underlie much discussion on innovation, intellectual property rights, technology policy, and product development. Coherent conceptual, theoretical and practical conclusions from research on knowledge creation, theory of learning, history of technology, and the social basis of innovative change have rarely been made. This book argues that innovation is about creating meaning; that it is inherently social; and is grounded in existing social practices. To understand the social basis of innovation and technology development we have to move beyond the traditional product-centric view on innovations. Integrating concepts from several disciplinary perspectives and detailed analyses of the evolution of Internet-related innovations, including packet-switched computer networks, World Wide Web, and the Linux open source operating system, the book develops foundations for a new theoretical and practical understanding of innovation. For example, it shows that innovative development can occur in two qualitatively different ways, one based on evolving specialization and the other based on recombination of existing socially produced resources. The expanding communication and collaboration networks have increased the importance of the recombinatory mode making mobility of resources, sociotechnical translation mechanisms, and meaning creation in communities of practice increasingly important for innovation research and product development.

Knowledge Management and Business Model Innovation

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A collection of diverse perspectives on KM frontiers

Knowledge Management and Business Model Innovation

Manufacturer: IGI Global
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1878289985

Book Description

We are living in interesting times characterized by increasing digitalization of business enterprises in a global interconnected knowledge economy. With waning euphoria about the first wave of digital e-business enterprises and a sobering dot-com stock market, business model innovation is being recognized as the key enabler that can unleash value creation for new digital enterprises. In contrast to traditional factors of production, knowledge assets and intellectual capital are expected to play a dominant role in determining both valuation and value-creation capabilities of most new age enterprises. Not surprisingly, Knowledge Management for Business Model Innovation is anticipated to be the mantra for survival, competence and success of Net enterprises as well as traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises faced with the challenge of transforming their business models into and beyond click-and-mortar companies.

Customer Reviews:

A collection of diverse perspectives on KM frontiers.......2003-01-23

Published at a time of waning euphoria about the dotcom boom, this hefty tome offers new perspectives on the importance of knowledge assets and intellectual capital for unleashing business model innovation.

The 25 chapters are drawn from 34 contributors in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America; the compiled material is divided into four sections: KM frameworks, knowledge work, knowledge assets valuation, and organizational aspects of business model innovation. The writing styles are varied, and differing perspectives are offered at the cutting edge of the KM curve.

IT investments have not always been in lock-step with productivity increases, Malhotra rightly begins. For instance, ERP implementations led to an unprecedented level of information sharing across organisational functions - but straitjacketed the information flexibility of information processing for each of the locked-in functions.

And despite contributions of IT via phases like automation, streamlining of procedures, and process re-engineering, there has been little emphasis on business model innovation or rethinking the overall business, argues Malhotra.

Increasing empowerment of online customers, suppliers, partners and other intermediaries have led to a greater impact of external environments on internal logistics of a company, a trend well-exploited by Net pioneers like Amazon.com.

"It is not that traditional brick and mortar companies were not leading users of IT; however, the new Net-based companies have fundamentally redefined the value equations related to their internal value chains and supply chains," says Malhotra.

In such a hyperturbulent and discontinuous environment, he identifies shortcomings in much of the current KM thinking, whose simplistic assumptions may inadvertently make yesterday's archived best practices tomorrow's core rigidities.

"The new business model of the Information Age is marked by fundamental, not incremental, change," he argues. Current KM approaches haven't dealt adequately with the "creative abrasion and creative conflict" that are necessary for business model innovation today.

KM should embody the organisational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information-processing capacity of information technologies on the one hand, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings on the other, Malhotra advocates.

Management strategies need to shift from command and control - to sense and respond. KM processes should be focused on doing the right thing (effectiveness), not just doing the thing right (efficiency). KM is not merely about bottling water from rivers of data, but about giving people canoes and compasses to navigate in these rivers of data. Instead of just codified best practices and enterprise portals, the emphasis should be on unlearning ineffective best practices and the continuous refinement and pursuit of better practices.

Other KM framework writers in the book also agree with some of these positions. Dealing with complexity, equivocality, uncertainty, and ambiguity in today's environment can lead to information overload and collapse of sense-making in a company.

Tools like the knowledge matrix can be used for knowledge accounting and management in a company, especially for managing fuzzy boundaries between external entities where decisions about outsourcing and alliancing need to be made (particularly in the case of global operators).

KM practices can differ according to the nature of the organization: project-based (eg. construction industry), umbrella corporations (eg. GE), virtual business communities (eg. the Linux movement on the Internet), and the multi-directional network (eg. lobbies of SMEs in Taiwan).

In terms of new approaches to knowledge work, Malhotra advocates a movement away from hi-tech hidebound KM systems to one of more creative chaos, greater social interaction, playfulness in organisational choices, and strategic planning as anticipation of surprise.

Care should be taken to ensure that IT-driven KM strategy does not become mechanistic and objectify and calcify knowledge into static, inert information, thus disregarding the role of tacit knowledge.

A useful way of planning for increased information flows among mobile workers is via a two-dimensional grid for different/same time/place interactions, with tools like Intranet-based email, videoconferencing, and meetings. Challenges can arise in virtual organizations which allow tele-work, due to possibility of overwork, stress, and isolation among its knowledge workers.

New kinds of `knowledge toolboxes' are called for to effectively measure human capital and organisational culture elements like trust, and to actually use these measures. Stakeholder knowledge values lie at different levels: employee (self-actualisation), customer (product adoption capability), and top management (cohesiveness, motivation).

A very interesting chapter offers an example of assessing knowledge capital at the national economic level, while planning for growth and performance for the entire country.

Going beyond measures of GDP, a joint Swedish-Israeli study assessed Israel's intellectual assets in 1997 in terms of financial capital (productivity, exports), market capital (diffusion of new products, participation in international events, openness to different cultures, language skills), process capital (computerization and communications infrastructure, Internet usage, newspaper circulation, student-teacher ratio, innovation, top management international experience, entrepreneurship, VC funds, immigration), human capital (equal employment opportunities, percentage of book distribution, health rates), and renewal and development capital (civilian R&D expenditures, scientific publications, patents, startups).

Another chapter extends such valuation considerations to public-private partnerships, involving academia, industry and government, which are becoming increasingly necessary as no organization or country can on its own generate all the knowledge it may need.

Priorities, timelines, domains and financial expectations for each sector vary, and these in turn influence the nature of knowledge assets generated by a country and their monetary attachments, eg. financing of new research for the industry or for citizens at large.

At the KM tool level, researchers and entrepreneurs are racing to create the next generation of effective KM applications and infrastructure, including communication, storage, gathering, dissemination, and synthesis. Ernst&Young predicts that KM has the potential to exceed ERP as an application opportunity.

CKOs play a key role in organizations, in managing corporate knowledge capital and championing knowledge-centric cultures; they require a blend of technical, human and financial skills.

Book Description

This is an essential book for all those concerned with the field of assessment. The authors of this book form an international group of distinguished experts in the field of assessment. They address relevant and timely conceptual and practical issues from a research perspective. It is a book which reaches forward and which, based on research results, clearly provides solutions to practical applications at the cutting edge of the emerging area of new modes of assessment. In a clear and rigorous manner, the authors explore new methods and study the various quality aspects of innovative approaches. Various research studies presented in this book focus on the impact of new modes of assessment and in doing so, they strengthen the links between instruction, learning, and assessment.

Creative Destruction: Business Survival Strategies in the Global Internet Economy

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Interesting reading and analytic edge
schumpeter revisited
A thoughtful and highly useful book
A Lego Box of Valuable Ideas
A Multi-Dimensional Examination of a Basic Concept

Creative Destruction: Business Survival Strategies in the Global Internet Economy

Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

More than fifty years ago, Joseph Schumpeter stated that processes intrinsic to a capitalist society produce a "creative destruction," whereby innovations destroy obsolete technologies, only to be assaulted in turn by newer and more efficient rivals. This book asks whether the current chaotic state of the telecommunications and related Internet industries is evidence of creative destruction, or simply a result of firms, governments, and others wasting valuable resources with limited benefits to society as a whole. In telecommunications, for example, wireless, IP, and cable-based technologies are all fighting for a share of the market currently dominated by older, circuit-switched, copper-terminated networks. This process is accompanied by mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, and investment and divestment in worldwide markets.

The selections discuss the primary challenge facing firms, governments, and other players: how to exploit the opportunities created by such destructive dynamics. They highlight the importance of national regulations promoting competition and nonmonopolistic market structures, as well as the role of new technologies such as the Internet in driving down the price and speeding the diffusion of innovative products and services in telecommunications, media, electronic retailing, and other "new economy" industries.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting reading and analytic edge.......2001-11-08

It is a thorough analysis of the technological advances of our era and the depth of the internet industry. I was particularly interested in the implications for Latin America and the technological transfer from liberalization. It is a useful book for practictioners and for more academic minds.

schumpeter revisited.......2001-07-19

Creative Destruction presents a fascinating revival of an old concept in the context of recent technological developments and innovation. It offers a brilliant account of how information technologies accelerate the process of creative destruction today and helps understand how information society articulates with in a wider framework of economic history. Those interested in Latin America will appreciate, in particluar, the recent developments in the telecommunications industry in the region.

A thoughtful and highly useful book.......2001-07-10

This is an outstanding collection of articles. These papers combine scholarly depth with usefulness for practitioners. They will help you understand where we've been and forecast where we are going with the Internet. I teach courses on Internet Business Strategy and will use this collection next year. My favorites are Baumol's "Innovation and Creative Destruction; McKnight's "Internet Business Models: Creative Destruction as Usual" and Lehr's "A New Theory of the Internet Firm." They provide a solid conceptual basis for understanding the implications of the Internet economy. One thing truly unique about this book is the thoughtful and detailed discussions of the implications of the Internet on international business. There are six papers that focus on these issues. I have not seen this anywhere else. In a world where people publish books peddling derivative nostrums about the network economy, it's a pleasure to finally find one that deals with these issues in a serious, thoughtful and, most of all, useful way.

A Lego Box of Valuable Ideas.......2001-05-08

Rather than focusing on a single angle and building a long argument in its favor, this compendium's treatment of diverse dimensions of creative destruction lets the reader paint his or her own picture of the net effects of Schumpeter's famous concept. The book's 11 articles touch on topics as diverse as the future of telecommunications firms in a Net-centric world, the impact of regulatory reform on the Internet in Europe, the institutional barriers to Internet-driven creative destruction in Japan, and the impact of open-source software business models.

Creative Destruction is a Lego-box of interesting ideas that managers and academics can recombine into constructs valuable to their work, teaching, or research. I found it very rich reading.

A Multi-Dimensional Examination of a Basic Concept.......2001-04-13

There are three recent publications with the same title (Creative Destruction) whose authors correlate Joseph Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction" with the contemporary business world. Foster and Kaplan explain "why companies that are built to last underperform the market -- and how to successfully transform them" whereas in their work, Nolan and Croson offer "a six-stage process for transforming the organization." In the third volume co-edited by McKnight, Vaaler, and Katz, various authors and co-authors of 13 anthologized essays examine various "business survival strategies for the global Internet economy." I highly recommend all three volumes as well as two of Schumpeter's works: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, and, Essays: On Entrepreneurs, Innovations, Business Cycles, and the Evolution of Capitalism.

This book grew out of a symposium held at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the spring of 1999. The topic was "Creative Destruction -- or Just Destruction?" Those who presented papers were asked to address "the key technological, regulatory, organizational, and competitive dynamics compelling change in the way firms and stakeholders do business in an increasingly global and Internet-centric society." At the symposium there were (and in this volume there are) four points which are consistent with the theme of "creative destruction":

The Destruction of Traditional Industry Structures

The Destruction of Traditional Regulatory Structures

The Destruction of Traditional Competitive Positioning Strategies

The Destruction of Traditional Technological Assumptions

It is important to keep in mind that this is not a manual. Although there are numerous suggestions, checklists, points of emphasis, graphic illustrations, and examples offered, the volume's primary purpose is to stimulate continued discussion and debate on the major challenges now facing firms, governments, and other players -- while suggesting "how to exploit the new opportunities created by creative dynamics."

The material is organized within five Parts: Introduction, Theory and Practice of Creative Destruction, The Global Context for Creative Destruction, Business Destruction Strategies in the Global Internet Economy, and Creative Business Survival Strategies. For the reader's convenience, the editors offer brief comments about each subject and about each of those who address it. After reading the excellent Introduction, you may decide not to read the everything that follows from beginning to end. In that event, select what is directly relevant to your and your organization's most immediate and urgent needs and interests. (In all probability, some of those needs and interests will soon change.) The editors provide three supplementary sections (Contributors, Notes, and References) which assist and encourage further study as well as "continued discussion and debate."

I am curious to know what Schumpeter would say about the material in this book if he were discussing it as I am now. My guess (only a guess) is that he would observe that his basic concept of "creative destruction" remains relevant but the process is occurring at an ever-increasing velocity and in ways and to an extent he could not have envisioned 50-60 years ago. Another guess (only a guess) is that, based on what is now happening (and not happening) in the global community, he would suggest that process of "creative destruction" in all organizations (regardless of their size or nature) has only begun. The Chinese character for the word "crisis" has two meanings: "peril" and "opportunity." For many (perhaps most) organizations, the process of creative destruction means death; for others, it offers the opportunity for at least survival and perhaps regeneration. The authors represented in this superb volume help us to understand the differences between the two groups....also, the probable consequences of those differences.

E-Business Innovation and Change Management
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E-Business Innovation and Change Management

Manufacturer: IGI Global
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1591401380

Book Description

Demonstrating how organizations around the world are capitalizing on new technologies such as the Internet and the World Wide Web to develop e-business, this book shows how evolving e-business models, integrated solutions, and improved technological infrastructure are continuously changing the way business is conducted. This discusses the ways in which the e-business revolution brings new ways of dealing with customers and business partners, new revenue streams, new ways of processing information, and new organization structures. In addition, advice is provided on developing new skill sets, electronic supply chains, new standards and policies, new collaborations and adaptable business strategies.

Management of Technological Change: The Great Challenge of Management for the Future

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Management of Technological Change: The Great Challenge of Management for the Future
E.G. Frankel
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0792306740

Managing Technological Development: Strategic and Human Resources Issues (Technological Innovation and Human Resources)

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Managing Technological Development: Strategic and Human Resources Issues (Technological Innovation and Human Resources)
Urs E. Gattiker
Manufacturer: Walter de Gruyter
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