The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Amazon.com

Updated Edition: Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)

Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his story after his book's release and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What's changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition--on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain--are largely unaltered. Instead, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls "uploading," the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the "New Middle" class. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. --Tom Nissley

Where Were You When the World Went Flat?

Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we've now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?")

And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he's made in "The World Is Flat 2.0," including his response to parents who said to him, "Great, Mr. Friedman, I'm glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?"

The Essential Tom Friedman

From Beirut to Jerusalem
The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Longitudes and Attitudes

More on Globalization and Development

China, Inc. by Ted Fishman
Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz
The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs

Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto

Book Description

The World Is Flat is Thomas L. Friedman’s account of the great changes taking place in our time, as lightning-swift advances in technology and communications put people all over the globe in touch as never before—creating an explosion of wealth in India and China, and challenging the rest of us to run even faster just to stay in place. This updated and expanded edition features more than a hundred pages of fresh reporting and commentary, drawn from Friedman’s travels around the world and across the American heartland—from anyplace where the flattening of the world is being felt.

In The World Is Flat, Friedman at once shows “how and why globalization has now shifted into warp drive” (Robert Wright, Slate) and brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, he explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; how governments and societies can, and must, adapt; and why terrorists want to stand in the way. More than ever, The World Is Flat is an essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.

Download Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist gives a bold, timely, and surprising picture of the state of globalization in the twenty-first century

Customer Reviews:

What a good boy am I.......2007-10-06

Reading this book is like watching someone else's kids open their Christmas presents from relatives they don't really know. I'm not sure how the author can possibly be so fascinated by technology and yet know absolutely nothing about it at the same time, but his endless diatribes about the miracles of PayPal and Microsoft Word are beyond laughable, and I was pretty much in shock when he started citing howstuffworks-dot-com as a technical reference on fiber optics and SOAP. What editor told him that this was OK?

So enamored with his own cleverness is he that Mr. Friedman dedicates several pages to explaining the book's title, even though a single sentence would have sufficed. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop after the first chapter; rather than make a point and move on, he has to point out the fact that he just made a point and tell you what a wonderful point it was just in case you missed the point. It's like hanging out with that one friend who sits around smiling and pointing to his butt after he f*rts at the dinner table.

If you want to learn about globalization and are not old enough to remember the first light bulb, go read "No Logo" instead. This is horrible, irrelevant geriatric babbling.

My opinion is flat.......2007-10-03

When a book has had over a thousand reviews, what can I possibly say that hasn't already been said? So I will keep it short and not so sweet.

No one will read this book, or any of the updates, for "fun." Do you NEED to read it? Yes, it contains some important economic concepts and realities, but it's a bit overlong. I'd say it could be cut in half, so skim through some of the numerous "interviews," repetition of central points, and endless advice and encouragement. The global pie is getting bigger and better, but the competition for piecies of that pie is heating up. Smart, ambitious, creative people will thrive; slow, lazy, dull people will languish, and everything inbetween. For too long many Americans have been sitting on their laurels and the day of reckoning is near. Heed this warning: Put down your TV remotes, game controllers, and iPods, and start working like your life (or lifestyle) depended on it. Get your rear into some serious gear, and don't balk at the notion that you should be an "expert" in at least three different, unrelated fields. Does this scare or excite you?

In so many interviews with foreign entrepreneurs, we are told (or reassured) that no matter how much of the "mundane" work is performed by countries other than the U.S., America's creative and innovative spark is still unsurpassed: All the world looks to America to lead the way into the future. I'm not sure. A lot of that "mundane" work was high level and highly paid, and why should we expect that America will continue to dominate in creativity and innovation? The truth is, we're in for a flattening of living standards, and from the perspective of the relatively high American standard of living, it will seem like a drop in standards until we reach another equilibrium (who knows how long that will take?). In any case, the reassurances about the talents and abilities of Americans seem at odds with other parts of the book, such as Bill Gates feeling "terrified at the American work force of tomorrow."

If you're already working hard at becoming an expert in three fields, then you probably don't need to read this book. Indeed, you probably don't have time to read it, or to read and write Amazon reviews, for that matter.

Great book to introduce an inside to the 90's and now.......2007-10-03

This was an excellent book for someone who is ever curious about the expanding global ecomomy as a whole. As a sailor in the U.S. Navy I found the book fasinating because I not only grew up during which most of the book was talking about but I am witnessing the predictions of the book first hand. Great book all around!!

Friedman's writing and subjects are captivating.......2007-09-27

Are you still a little confused about why American corporations are outsourcing to India and manufacturing in China, or why Al Qaeda has suddenly become so powerful? If so, this is the book for you.

Friedman's made 'Globalization' simple enough for a high school student to understand. That being said, this is NOT a high school textbook. It is NOT dry. Friedman is a great journalist and an author who will hold your attention chapter after chapter.

Friedman has a knack for taking complex and often emotionally charged issues and breaking them down into easy to understand concepts. You don't have to be a graduate student to enjoy this book. It's great!

Globalization 3.0.......2007-09-24

I wish I had read this book during a Globalization class I took a year ago.

Friedman is an exceptional writer, very engaging. He really lays out the information well and then brings in together in the latter part of the book.

I thought the middle part of the book could of been edited a bit.

Overall, an excellent introduction to globalization and the affect this will have on the US and industries in general.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Average customer rating:

A very thought-provoking book for people trying to grow their business.
"Good" is not "good enough".
Good To Great
My Business Bible
Still applicable in 2007

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
Jim Collins
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Leadership | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Systems & Planning | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

History & Nonfiction | Book Clubs | Specialty Stores | Books

Business & Professional | Book Clubs | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

ASIN: 0066620996
Release Date: 2001-10-16

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards

Book Description

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Customer Reviews:

A very thought-provoking book for people trying to grow their business........2007-10-02

This was a very interesting book for me to read. I have to imagine that I am in a pretty narrow target market for this book, though the concepts may be broadly applied. I work for a small business and can see many opportunities to put this book's findings to work.

The book tells the various stories of companies that made a transition from a market participant to market leader and saw sustained success for at least 15 years. The author was able to identify a few common factors between these companies, and he and his research team present them as a model for us to follow.

I had but one small issue, which is probably not information that contributes to the rest of the research. They detail radical decisions made by upper management, sometimes completely changing the face of an established business. I figure there must be a largely disproportionate number of business that fail when they made the same or a similar move. I would have liked to see some detail behind how those successful companies came to make that decision. The decision itself was largely overlooked.

Like many "business" books, I feel that much of what was written here was largely common sense. They weren't necessarily ideas that I have had or would have come up with on my own, but as I read them they seemed mundane in analysis. It made the reading slow going, but there was a silver lining -- for instant gratification, each chapter ends with a few pages of main concepts extracted from the text.

There was some very insightful research in Good to Great. The common elements identified were relevant and practical. It would not be an easy model to follow, but if it were it would defeat its own purpose to isolate those corporate characteristics that set successful companies apart. If you have ever wondered what steps you should follow to take your company from Good to Great, this is a book you should read (even if it is just the chapter summaries).

"Good" is not "good enough"........2007-10-02

"Good" is not "good enough". When organizations and/or individuals settle for "good" as "good enough" they set themselves up to become obsolete. "Good to Great" looks at those organizations that decided never to settle for "good enough" and became "Great". How about you? Are you striving to become great at what you do, or have you settled for being good enough to get by? Does the organization that you work for have a plan to move from good to great? Are you a part of the change that will take your company to the next level or do you believe that your company is "good enough" right where it is?

I believe there is more value to be gained by pushing good organizations to become great than trying to turn mediocre organizations into good ones. The data presented in "Good to Great" shows just how much value can be gained by those willing to make the leap to Great. The book also shows you what principles of business those companies that made the leap had to adopt.

My favorite chapters are chapter two (Level 5 Leadership) and three (First Who...Then What). Level 5 Leadership address the benefits of having personal humility combined with a strong will to build something great. We have to many leaders at the top that have let their egos become more important than the organizations they run. "Good to Great" explains how the leaders of those companies that made the leap avoided the ego trap while having great ambitions for building something exceptional. Everyone who wishes to become a leader that makes a difference should read this chapter.

"First Who...Then What" does a good job of showing how great companies put "talent" at the top of the agenda. Any leader who wants to build a strong organization must put "talent" at the top of their agenda. Jim Collins address two critical issues companies need to address when it comes to recruiting and developing their talent. He shows us why it is important to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. And then goes on to explain how great companies get the people in the right seat. How many people in your organization are in the wrong seat? How many should be taken off the bus entirely? Companies are not good at hiring the right people and then are terrible at assigning them to the right job. This chapter is a must for anyone involved in the hiring of talent.

I also recommend spending some time at jimcollins.com. I have visited and revisited this site to get more information on the concepts presented in "Good to Great". Buy the book, then go to the website and start your own journey from good to great.

Larry Kevin Adams
theactionator.com

Good To Great.......2007-09-28

Our company is taking the advice of the book to heart. We have formed our "hedgehog" group and all are excited. We want to work in an environment of greatness. The book shows us the way. We have 7 of our employees who have agreed to "donate their time" at lunch several times a month to help us identify our circles. I would recommend this book to any company or organization that truly wants to have their maximum impact in the arena in which they operate!

My Business Bible.......2007-09-24

If I have a bible for business, this is it. First who then what is the only way to go!

Still applicable in 2007.......2007-09-19

I enjoyed the thought provoking aspect of this book. The different levels of leadership, the hedgehog concept are the two takeaways from this book.

How many of us fall into the trap of being everything to everyone? Most I suspect from the findings presented in the book.

Read this book to find out how you can strive to be a Level 5 leader. I found the book very insightful. Jim Collins and his team hit a homerun!

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

Average customer rating:

Good article, stretched out to a padded book
One Trick Pony
Good book for the startup entrepreneur in the 21-century
Looking at it from the point of view of the producer and not the consumer or the retailer
Must read

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Chris Anderson
Manufacturer: Hyperion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Economic Conditions | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Conditions | International | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Consumer Behavior | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Web Marketing | Business & Culture | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Computer Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
The Wisdom of Crowds
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

ASIN: 1401302378

Book Description

"The Long Tail" is a powerful new force in our economy: the rise of the niche. As the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically, our markets are shifting from a one-size-fits-all model of mass appeal to one of unlimited variety for unique tastes. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the ability to offer vast choice is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it, from DVDs at Netflix to songs on iTunes to advertising on Google. However, this is not just a virtue of online marketplaces; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for business, one that is just beginning to show its power. After a century of obsessing over the few products at the head of the demand curve, the new economics of distribution allow us to turn our focus to the many more products in the tail, which collectively can create a new market as big as the one we already know. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing are essentially resetting the definition of whats commercially viable across the board. If the 20th century was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches.

Customer Reviews:

Good article, stretched out to a padded book.......2007-09-26

This book started off as an article in Wired Magazine, and it was an excellent one. But Anderson must have decided to cash in, because the book doesn't add anything that wasn't covered in the article itself. It's not a complex concept.

Read the article on the Wired website. Then go spend your money on something from a tiny niche market.

One Trick Pony.......2007-09-09

This is one of those books that has one, keen insight and then takes one hundred + pages to say the same thing over and again. The keen point is indeed interesting. It just does not a complete book make. My $.02 !!

Good book for the startup entrepreneur in the 21-century .......2007-08-20

This is an insightful book into the today's world of retail business. Cool examples of how the Internet has leveled the playing field for many small businesses and artist.

Looking at it from the point of view of the producer and not the consumer or the retailer .......2007-08-16

I am not much of a business mind but I think I get the picture here. Instead of twenty percent of the product bringing in eighty percent of the revenue ninety- eight percent of the product is going to bring in all the revenue. Having so much available, and having ready access to it means sales no longer concentrate on a relatively few items. Freedom of choice abounds, niches multiply, Alvin Toffler is happy, future shock is no longer shocking, customization is here forever, and we all can have anything we want as long as we are able to pay for it.
Good. But I think of this in another way. Does this mean that 'value' also will not be centered as we ordinarily center it in the great works, the masterpeices, the few chosen ones? Does it mean our whole conception of valuing cultural goods will change, and a few big things will be less worshipped while many more appreciated? In other words will deTocqueville be happy here because 'equality' is in the saddle and mankind has many little good things, instead of the aristocracy only having a few?
And what does that mean for creators of culture? As a writer can I now happily post my unpublished writings with the thought that perhaps a few will read them, where before none did. In other words a moneyless long- tail is still a long- tail.
I don't know. But I do sense Anderson has hit on to a new truth here which will have all kinds of implications better business people than me will have to see.

Must read.......2007-08-14

The Long Tail is a must read for anyone wondering how the Internet works or how it's changing the world as we know it. In the book, Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine, explains how one simple principle is behind so many of the social and economic changes we are seeing with the internet. The Internet makes it possible for many people to produce and publish cheaply and for many other people to find those "amateur" works easily. For example, until the Internet, the only music you had access to was the top 40 on the radio or maybe the top 500 albums at the music store and maybe a local band at the bar on weekends. Now you have access to hundreds of thousands of songs written and produced by anybody and everybody in the world. Not only that but they are easily searchable in many different ways. So a you don't have to listen to just hits anymore and you don't have to be a world wide hit to be successful. That's what is changing the world. Niche markets are growing (around all of these non-hit works) and at the same time the way we share and find these niche products is becoming easier and easier - creating new communities online.

Chris Anderson explains it much better than me and I highly recommend the book if you've noticed that the Internet is changing the world and wondered why.

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm

Average customer rating:

Kudos to Ideos
Innovation for All
Innovation and creativity "how-to" guide
El arte de innovar estilo IDEO
Skip it and go right to 10 Faces

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
Tom Kelley , Tom Peters , and Tom Peters
Manufacturer: Currency
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Operations Research | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

History of Technology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
Harvard Business Review on Innovation
Designing Interactions
Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It
Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change

ASIN: 0385499841
Release Date: 2001-01-16

Amazon.com

IDEO, the world's leading design firm, is the brain trust that's behind some of the more brilliant innovations of the past 20 years--from the Apple mouse, the Polaroid i-Zone instant camera, and the Palm V to the "fat" toothbrush for kids and a self-sealing water bottle for dirt bikers. Not surprisingly, companies all over the world have long wondered what they could learn from IDEO, to come up with better ideas for their own products, services, and operations. In this terrific book from IDEO general manager Tom Kelley (brother of founder David Kelley), IDEO finally delivers--but thankfully not in the step-by-step, flow-chart-filled "process speak" of most how-you-can-do-what-we-do business books. Sure, there are some good bulleted lists to be found here--such as the secrets of successful brainstorming, the qualities of "hot teams," and, toward the end, 10 key ingredients for "How to Create Great Products and Services," including "One Click Is Better Than Two" (the simpler, the better) and "Goof Proof" (no bugs).

But The Art of Innovation really teaches indirectly (not to mention enlightens and entertains) by telling great stories--mainly, of how the best ideas for creating or improving products or processes come not from laboriously organized focus groups, but from keen observations of how regular people work and play on a daily basis. On nearly every page, we learn the backstories of some now-well-established consumer goods, from recent inventions like the Palm Pilot and the in-car beverage holder to things we nearly take for granted--like Ivory soap (created when a P&G worker went to lunch without turning off his soap mixer, and returned to discover his batch overwhipped into 99.44 percent buoyancy) and Kleenex, which transcended its original purpose as a cosmetics remover when people started using the soft paper to wipe and blow their noses. Best of all, Kelley opens wide the doors to IDEO's vibrant, sometimes wacky office environment, and takes us on a vivid tour of how staffers tackle a design challenge: they start not with their ideas of what a new product should offer, but with the existing gaps of need, convenience, and pleasure with which people live on a daily basis, and that IDEO should fill. (Hence, a one-piece children's fishing rod that spares fathers the embarrassment of not knowing how to teach their kids to fish, or Crest toothpaste tubes that don't "gunk up" at the mouth.)

Granted, some of their ideas--like the crucial process of "prototyping," or incorporating dummy drafts of the actual product into the planning, to work out bugs as you go--lend themselves more easily to the making of actual things than to the more common organizational challenge of streamlining services or operations. But, if this big book of bright ideas doesn't get you thinking of how to build a better mousetrap for everything from your whole business process to your personal filing system, you probably deserve to be stuck with the mousetrap you already have. --Timothy Murphy

Book Description

IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.

There isn't a business in America that doesn't want to be more creative in its thinking, products, and processes. At many companies, being first with a concept and first to market are critical just to survive. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley based design firm IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative and energized company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit.

IDEO doesn't buy into the myth of the lone genius working away in isolation, waiting for great ideas to strike. Kelley believes everyone can be creative, and the goal at his firm is to tap into that wellspring of creativity in order to make innovation a way of life. How does it do that? IDEO fosters an atmosphere conducive to freely expressing ideas, breaking the rules, and freeing people to design their own work environments. IDEO's focus on teamwork generates countless breakthroughs, fueled by the constant give-and-take among people ready to share ideas and reap the benefits of the group process. IDEO has created an intense, quick-turnaround, brainstorm-and-build process dubbed "the Deep Dive."

In entertaining anecdotes, Kelley illustrates some of his firm's own successes (and joyful failures), as well as pioneering efforts at other leading companies. The book reveals how teams research and immerse themselves in every possible aspect of a new product or service, examining it from the perspective of clients, consumers, and other critical audiences.

Kelley takes the reader through the IDEO problem-solving method:

>Carefully observing the behavior or "anthropology" of the people who will be using a product or service

>Brainstorming with high-energy sessions focused on tangible results

>Quickly prototyping ideas and designs at every step of the way

>Cross-pollinating to find solutions from other fields

>Taking risks, and failing your way to success

>Building a "Greenhouse" for innovation

IDEO has won more awards in the last ten years than any other firm of its kind, and a full half-hour Nightline presentation of its creative process received one of the show's highest ratings. The Art of Innovation will provide business leaders with the insights and tools they need to make their companies the leading-edge, top-rated stars of their industries.

Customer Reviews:

Kudos to Ideos.......2007-08-28

Excellent book with good insights. If you are in the business of innovation, this is one book that you shouldn't miss. I also recommend EIGHTSTORM: 8-Step Brainstorming for Innovative Managers.

Innovation for All.......2007-06-29

Through anecdotes, Kelley demonstrates how stumbling blocks to innovation can be overcome. He shows an appreciation for experimentation, momentum, and embraces failure as a true path to knowing. Failed prototypes are wonderful learning tools. Kelley's perspective keeps spirits high. He leaves much of the innovative process open ended - nearly encouraging innovation on innovating.

Interestingly, Kelley notes how medicine is becoming personalized and that the future can not be perfectly predicted. Still, he says we must aim at it. This was an important nugget of wisdom for me, a research coordinator at a think-tank-like public health research group, the Healthcare Innovation and Technology lab at Columbia University. On a daily basis we deal with innovation to improve healthcare and need to effectively innovate. Given that we tread a very specific territory - health and technology - and that Kelley's book could be so useful to us, it is obvious that he really has something to offer to everyone.

Innovation and creativity "how-to" guide.......2007-06-07

The Art of Innovation explains many of IDEO's creative techniques and in so doing paints a picture of the physical context in which all that creativity occurs, namely IDEO's office, your average geek's idea of paradise brimming with high-tech prototypes, foam cubes, "tech box" caddies with giant Post-Its and coloring pens ... and yes, it does look more like a playschool than Dilbertesque gray cubicle-land. Teamwork, friendship and a shared passion for helping clients innovate is clearly what binds people together and stimulates their creativity, while a supportive and forgiving management structure doesn't just tolerate weirdness, it actively encourages it. IDEO seems to have taken Tom Peters' advice "If you want to do weird, hire weird people" to the next level. In IDEO-land, "normal" people would probably stand out a mile.

Two creative techniques - brainstorming and prototyping - are particularly well described, in a way that encourages the reader to try something different. I've learnt some new tricks and even started applying them since reading the book.

El arte de innovar estilo IDEO.......2007-06-01

IDEO ha hecho de la innovación un arte, el cual es un proceso sistematizado, con pasos muy definidos, congruentes y faciles de llevar por las personas que conforman dentro sus empresas los equipos de innovacion y diseño.

Skip it and go right to 10 Faces.......2007-03-19

I recently read both this book and the Ten Faces of Innovation. My recomendation is to skip this book. It is written more like an advertisement for IDEO and was left feeling like Tom has crossed the line into arrogance. If you read it as a stand alone book there is a lot of useful information. However most of the concepts are covered in Ten Faces. If you have time read both books but if time is of the essence then jump right into the Ten Faces, you won't be disappointed.

Average customer rating:

Bad Costumer Care
Fast Service, Great Quality
Great!!
The "Foundation" of Knowledge For Successful Management
good starter book for new mangers and students in business

Modern Management
Samuel C. Certo , and S. Trevis Certo
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Systems & Planning | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Marketing: An Introduction, 7th Edition
Business (8th Edition)
The Legal Environment of Business
Survey of Accounting
The Ethics of Management

ASIN: 0131494708

Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive, flexible approach to the basic skills of business management with an emphasis on skills and applications. It presents traditional concepts, important contemporary issues, and timeless insights into applying management know-how–all toward the goal of achieving organizational success. Built around the concept of âCore Plusâ â a core of chapters covered in most courses, surrounded by a rich selection of optional chapters â enabling flexibility in the way the text is used. Management History, Operations Management, Information Technology in Management, and Creativity and Innovation in Management. For managers at all levels.

Customer Reviews:

Bad Costumer Care.......2007-03-11

Sell Sell Sell. That's what they really want only!!! ... I needed my book faster. I sent an email right before ordered it, saying that I wanted something faster, or I needed to cancel. Of course it was my fault of not seeing that they were from Europe, it was going to take 2 weeks but, there was no understanding AT ALL. Never buying with them anymore!!!

Fast Service, Great Quality.......2005-10-03

The book wsa in the exact condition the seller listed it at, which was close to perfect. It was delivered fast, no problems at all.

Great!!.......2005-09-17

The book was in excellent conditions also I got it before the estimaded date.

The "Foundation" of Knowledge For Successful Management.......2001-06-24

This book is one of the best foundation establishers I've read. I am the Chief of Strategy for a major headquarters and currently teach for three universities in such subjects as Strategic Management, Business Policy and Strategy, Business Communications, Supply Chain Management, and Production Operations Management. The point of that statement is that this book that I use on the job, as well as, to some degree in each course I teach. It is well written, organized, and provides outstanding tables and figures to clearly articulate the concepts. This is a desk-reference that will get lot's of handling. A must read!

good starter book for new mangers and students in business.......1999-07-22

author has good grasp of management in 21 century. What tools and skills will be needed

Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape

Average customer rating:

Fair
Well-written, concise, with specific examples
Open Business Models for Those Who Rely on Technology Innovation and Need Intellectual Property Protection
Innovation requires an open mind...and the courage to challenge "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."
The World It Is a'Changin

Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape
Henry Chesbrough
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Decision-Making & Problem Solving | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Systems & Planning | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Nanotechnology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

All Deals | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Science | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating And Profiting from Technology
Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

ASIN: 1422104273

Book Description

In his landmark book Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough demonstrated that because useful knowledge is no longer concentrated in a few large organizations, business leaders must adopt a new, “open” model of innovation. Using this model, companies look outside their boundaries for ideas and intellectual property (IP) they can bring in, as well as license their unutilized home-grown IP to other organizations.

In Open Business Models, Chesbrough takes readers to the next step—explaining how to make money in an open innovation landscape. He provides a diagnostic instrument enabling you to assess your company’s current business model, and explains how to overcome common barriers to creating a more open model. He also offers compelling examples of companies that have developed such models—including Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Air Products.

In addition, Chesbrough introduces a new set of players—“innovation intermediaries”—who facilitate companies’ access to external technologies. He explores the impact of stronger IP protection on intermediate markets for innovation, and profiles firms (such as Intellectual Ventures and Qualcomm) that center their business model on innovation and IP.

This vital resource provides a much-needed road map to connect innovation with IP management, so companies can create and capture value from ideas and technologies—wherever in the world they are found.

Customer Reviews:

Fair.......2007-06-21

This is another pretty good book from the author. As in his earlier book, he starts with the motivation for open innovation, which is an old idea but that is not well practiced. In this new book he addresses many of the shorcomings of the first book, such as getting real value out of the partnerships that can be formed while overcoming internal issues, such as NIH. He then talks about different ways companies go about this. What drives you crazy is that he seems unaware that companies have been doing this forever. In the consumer electronics industry, for example, open innovation is mostly the model. Companies like GE, TI, and RCA were examples. In the case of GE and RCA they go back almost 100 years.

Well-written, concise, with specific examples.......2007-06-02

As with his previous book Open Innovation, Chesbrough provides a concise and easily read review of important new trends in high-tech management. In this book the focus is on the path an innovation takes to profitability in the marketplace. Among the topics reviewed are novel "intermediate markets" for ideas and technology.

I particularly appreciated the chapters of the book that provide nine examples of companies that are more-or-less "pure play" innovation intermediaries. Companies like Innocentive, Ocean Tomo, and UTEK are profiled in depth. I appreciate the specificity, which will allow the reader to evaluate Chesbrough's insights into the future: By following up on the progress of these companies, we'll see how well Chesbrough hit the mark. This specificity is rare in business books.

It will be interesting to see where Chesbrough's interests flow in future. I would welcome a focus on public sector research institutions. A comparison of the innovation and commercialization models among universities, NIH, NASA, ESA, etc. could be helpful to policy makers as Open Innovation ideas gain wider acceptance.

Open Business Models for Those Who Rely on Technology Innovation and Need Intellectual Property Protection.......2007-05-14

This book is misnamed. Rather than being about open business models, the book's topic is about how to open business models to benefit from access to more technological innovation and strengthen your competitive posture through intellectual property.

As a result, Professor Chesbrough creates a misapprehension that successful open business models are almost always linked to technological innovation as their main purpose and benefit. My own research (with Carol Coles in The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Secrets of Continuously Developing a More Profitable Business Model) indicates just the opposite point: Technological innovation is rarely the most effective way to open up your business model to create improvements.

So, this book's value is mostly to those who work in achieving or creating more benefits from technology innovation. If that is your interest, you've come to the right book. If that's not your interest, skip this book.

Why do those involved in achieving or creating more benefits from technology innovation need to open their business models? Professor Chesbrough points to several influences:

1. Technological innovation is coming from more sources than ever before. As a result, you will be developing inferior technology without accessing the best of what the world has to offer.

2. Most intellectual property isn't used for any practical purpose. That's a waste of social and company resources.

3. The protections for intellectual property are stronger now, and your pathway to progress will be blocked without collaborating with those who have complementary IP.

4. Product cycles are shorter and costs of developing new technologies are higher; open business models offer the promise of getting to market sooner at lower cost so that your business has a better chance of earning a decent return on new technology.

5. Large companies need to make new product development more productive if they are to meet their growth goals.

Professor Chesbrough does a nice job of developing those themes. He balances theoretical arguments with case histories of recent practices.

Of even more value, he explains how companies will have a hard time finding all of the technology they need without help. As a result, he feels that intermediaries will turn out to be important to helping connect organizations. His case histories of such intermediaries are very interesting in showing how difficult it is to play such intermediary roles without deep pockets.

For those who are new to the subject of technological innovation in the context of business models, you will find his descriptions of what a business model is (see page 182) and types for assessing your business model (see pages 132-133) to be helpful. The only quibble I would make with his types is that in his examples he assumes relative undifferentiation in industries and business types where there are often large nontechnological differentiations.

I found the last chapter to be by far the most helpful, in describing three case histories (IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Air Products) for showing how large organizations went from closed to open business models for the purpose of technological innovation. In fact, the discussion of Procter & Gamble's practices is the best one that I have read. That point, by itself, is sufficient to commend this book to you. I suspect that almost everyone will be doing what Procter & Gamble is doing now ten years hence.

Excellent work, Professor Chesbrough!

Innovation requires an open mind...and the courage to challenge "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." .......2007-03-14

What is an open business model? In Chapter 1, here's Henry Chesbrough's response to that question: "A business model performs two important functions: it creates value and it captures a portion of that value. It creates value by defining a series of activities from raw materials through to the final consumer that will yield a new product or service with value being added throughout the various activities. The business model captures value by by establishing a unique resource, asset, or position within that series of activities, where the firm enjoys a competitive advantage."

Having thus established a frame-of-reference, Chesbrough continues: "An open business model uses this new division of innovation labor - both in the creation of value and in the capture of a portion of that value. Open models create value by leveraging many more ideas, due to their inclusion of a variety of external concepts. Open models can also enable greater value capture, by using a key asset, resource, or position not only in the company's own business model but also in other companies businesses."

These two brief excerpts are provided because Chesbrough`s definitions of various terms are far clearer and more authoritative than mine could possibly be. Also, these excepts address the "what" so that in the balance of this brilliant book, Chesbrough can then focus almost entirely on the "why" and "how" concerning the design, implementation, modification, and performance measurement of open business models.

I was especially interested in what Chesbrough has to say about what several quite different exemplary companies -- including IBM, Qualcomm, Genzyme, Procter & Gamble, and Chicago (the musical stage show and film) -- share in common: "each started with an idea that traveled from invention to market through at least two different companies" which shared the work of innovation, and, all were assisted by effective management of an open business model. Chesbrough also devotes a substantial attention to IBM whose type 3 business model (i.e. multiple segmentations, "inside-out" mindset) reached a financial crisis in 1992. Had the IBM board not replaced its then CEO with Lou Gerstner and fully supported his leadership throughout an immensely complicated and equally difficult transformation , it is probable that IBM would not have survived. Gerstner deserves much of the credit for the success of that "cultural revolution" (as he once described it) but much credit should also be assigned to IBM's open source business model. Procter & Gamble is another company which completed an especially difficult transition from having internal staff members who protected (hoarded?) various technologies so that other companies, including potential competitors, could not use them to becoming a company with a much more open approach to innovation. Chesbrough notes that P&G began to pay much greater attention of external licensing of its technologies, (e.g. to BearingPoint), now strongly supports openly partnering for driving growth equity joint ventures (e.g. with Clorox), and an entirely new perspective on competitive advantage.

According to Jeff Weedman, vice president of P&G's external business development: "There are many kinds of competitive advantage. The original view here was: I have got it, and you don't. Then there is the view, that I have got it, you have got it, but I have it cheaper. Then there is I have got it, you have got it, but I got it first. Then there is I have got it, you have gotten it from me, so I make money when I sell it, and I make money when you sell it." To me, that in essence describes the primary competitive advantage of the open business model.

I also appreciate what is rarely provided in other business books: detailed notes (Pages 217-242) which are clustered per chapter. As I read them, it seemed as if Chesbrough were standing next to me, supplementing his narrative with additional comments that are always informative and frequently entertaining. What also struck me about Chesbrough's notes is that they enable him to acknowledge various sources with appreciation and admiration. His was obviously an open source approach to the research for this book and then to the writing of it.

To thrive in the new innovation landscape, change agents must have both an open mind and the courage to challenge what James O'Toole characterizes, in Leading Change, as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." They would also be well-advised to absorb and digest the material in this book. Congratulations to Henry Chesbrough on a brilliant achievement.

The World It Is a'Changin.......2007-03-04

We have become accustomed to the fact that innovation has become a standard of the industrial world. Indeed companies like Microsoft market (very successfully) what is essentially nothing but an arrangement of bits. One of the things that this book brings to mind is that a lot of other companies (Procter & Gamble, Air Products) are innovative in a business that you wouldn't think of as being particularly innovative.

This book is exploring fairly new ground in its concept of 'Open Innovation,' that is creating a marketplace for innovation itself. You might not be able to capitalize on your new innovative idea, perhaps Air Products can, or perhaps you can use something that Procter & Gamble has done. And where that's a market like that, there are new specialty companies in the business of marketing innovation between companies.

We live in a time where the future is going to require major changes, peak oil and global warming to name two harbingers of change. Companies that continue to live in the old world are going to have a very hard time -- go look at Ford and GM

Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction

Average customer rating:

A Great Work!
Important
Review of McCraw's book on Schumpeter
BEST WRITTEN RECENT BIOGRAPHY; BUT TENOUS WHEN IT MOVES FROM HISTORY TO ECONOMICS
The Basic Paradox of Capitalism

Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction
Thomas K. McCraw
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Business | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Theory | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Biographies | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

ASIN: 0674025237

Book Description

Listen to a short interview with Thomas McCraw
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane

Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland--all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. "Creative destruction," he said, is the driving force of capitalism.

Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most sophisticated conservative" of the twentieth century, Schumpeter made his mark as the prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril--to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, the general prosperity produced by the "capitalist engine" far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind.

During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by the specter of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983--the centennial of the birth of both men--Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, the best navigator through the turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate.

Prophet of Innovation is also the private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were the conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become the world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman--and admitted to failure only with the horses.

Customer Reviews:

A Great Work!.......2007-10-08

Schumpeter was an unusual man: both professionally and personally. This excellent biography captures both. Schumpeter sought fame, and the agonies he went through to achieve this obsession- mainly through the enormous amount of writing and research he undertook, which probably undermined his health and shortened his life- are well captured in this book.

Schumpeter sought to develop a 'system' of economics, yet his prolific reading and research lead him to discover that there is no such thing as a watertight system of economic theory. In fact, Schumpeter found, like most notable economists, that an understanding of economics comes from an understanding of history, psychology, sociology and many other areas of learning. And what a contrast to the emphasis of graduate economics courses taught in our schools today!

Having just read Greenspan's book, it comes as no surprise that Greenspan achnowleged Schumpeter as one of the greatest influences upon his outlook. Both men believe in the superiority of the capitalist system as a creator of wealth, yet not for any doctriare reasons, but because they are/were convinced that capitalism is part and parcel of the make up of humankind, and the way in which we organize themselves and cooperate to ensure our survival and progress.

Buy this book, and enjoy the read; you will find yourself coming back to it to reread sections over again.

Important.......2007-06-23

Free markets are hard to explain. It is even harder to explain why companies must fail and be replaced by new ones. In the U.S. we mostly let that happen but in Europe they try and prevent it. It seems that this issue will become even more important as the world becomes 100% "flat" and competition becomes more intense. Developments in Asia will make the levels of creative destruction we have seen in the past look mild by comparison.

This book gives a great introduction to one of the great economic minds. His insights, although proven over and over, are still not accepted my many.

Review of McCraw's book on Schumpeter.......2007-05-31

I have been impressed by this book, which is a good mix of the 'history' of Joseph Schumpeter and his ideas and contributions to economics. I think the author has obtained a very good balance between trying to understand this great economist, and presenting his work to the informed lay-person. Economists and non-economists alike will find a lot here, which is very relevant to today (perhaps even more so to economists working in academia!). Some of Schumpeter's major works (like Business Cycles published in 1939) are not easy to digest; but this book brings out enough to capture the essentials. Overall, this is the best book on Schumpeter I have seen.

BEST WRITTEN RECENT BIOGRAPHY; BUT TENOUS WHEN IT MOVES FROM HISTORY TO ECONOMICS.......2007-05-01

Thomas McCraw is one of the best business historians in the world and with this output, late in his career (he is an emeritus professor at Harvard now), he can lay claim to being one of the best historians in the world, not just a business historian. It is hard to imagine a political biography in recent years that comes close to matching the lucid style, perfect prose, excellent quotes and commentary about life as this book.

The subject is one of the most famous economists of the twentieth century, someone who along with Frederick Hayek, Ludwig Mises and others from the Austrian School came to anchor the philosophical basis for the success of economic and political freedom. The book covers in detail the personal life of Schumpeter, including a lot of material not commonly available. His biography of the deaths of his daughter mother and wife within months is an excellent if tragic basis to delineate the first part of Schumpeter's life, which the author suggests made him an Enfant Terrible, from the second, which the author calls made him an adult. The final segment is his becoming a Sage. Peppered throughout the book are some of the best quotations from some of the most famous persons in history, including legendary poets, yet ones the reader would never have read before.

For all those reasons, Thomas McCraw has delivered a book that is filling like a all-you-can-eat buffet, yet with each dish of the same quality as fine dining. IT IS A TOUR DE FORCE.

Yet there is a contextual flaw which weighs down the narrative. From the very first pages it is clear that Thomas McCraw is attempting to also make a comparative evaluation of economic systems, a task that quickly appears tenous, and to do that while crowning Schumpeter as the king of economics, past and present, at which point the narrative makes one cringe. Here is why this brilliant history turns into tenous economic analysis.

Firstly, as Thomas McCraw's colleagues across the Charles River should tell him, Schumpeter was his best not so much as a pure AUstrian-School economist but as a chronicler of the economy, almost a contemporary historian of the subject. In that sense he shared much with Karl Marx, who he studied extensively, for both really shined with words not with mathematics. So the author's repeated references to Schumpeter as a mathematical genius, or as a competitor in that regard with John Keynes, fails and fails obviously. Schumpeter was the least mathematical of all the great economists of the twentieth century.

Secondly, McCraw makes the error common to passionate biographers to make a sage out of their subject. Here too the book overreaches, for Schumpeter was among the worst at foretelling the future. Here again it was because he was more a historian, and less an economist. He predicted capitalism would collapse, a prediction that the author just glosses over. Yet the author pillories Karl Marx for the same error without realizing that Karl Marx wrote without the full benefit of the technological revolution, the telegraph and railroad barely underway by the 1840s. Yet by Schumpeter's time, not only were those revolutions done, but so was the telephone, electricity, the internal combustion engine and the airplane. As such, Schumpeter's pessimism was unforgivable while Karl Marx's was fully understandable.

Third, McCraw makes a shocking mistake by glossing over Schumpeter's lobbying for heavy reparations on the Germans after WW I. He did so by offering calculations that the German economy would easily recover, and therefore could support reparations. The point was fully opposed by John Keynes, who resigned as representative of Britain when the Schumpeterian perspective was used to devastate the Germans with debt burdens. If McCraw had not been at Harvard, or of such fame, it would easily have been a career ending mistake. After all, it is well known that those reparations led to Adolf Hitler and WW II, a point so well understood by 1945 that John Keynes was made the head of the entire postwar economic decisionmaking, precisely why he got to build the World Bank, IMF and Bretton Woods. Schumpeter by contrast was thoroughly discredited.

Fourth, for a business historian of unmatched credibility, McCraw makes a surprising contextual error with regard to Schumpeter's life. He seems to ignore the inevitability of progress, of the drivers of American growth in the early 20th century and absolute irrelevance of Schumpeter to that growth. Perhaps it is his bias as a biographer, or to make the layman buy the book, but it is fatal to the book. Here again, I point to the prior point that Schumpeter was more an economic historian than an economist in the sense that HAD SCHUMPETER NOT LIVED, NONE OF THE GREAT ECONOMIC ADVANCES OF THE 20TH CENTURY, INCLUDING THE VENTURE CAPITAL BUSINESS, WOULD HAVE BEEN HAMPERED. By contrast, without John Keynes, recovery after Sept. 11th, after WW II (when defense spending collapsed and social spending and reconstruction was increased to avoid a collapse of the economy) or in the midst of the Great Depression would have been hard to imagine. Precisely why comparative economic analysis undertaken by McCraw takes the tinge of conservative talk show simplicity. Harvard's economics department would likely have little of his business history about Schumpeter.

Finally, the book would have been a lot stronger had it left the idolization of Schumpeter to the jacket flaps and in the introduction. But repeated compliments only make the reader notice that the author has it wrong, especially when he summarily dismisses karl Marx or John Keynes the way a conservative talk show host would. All Schumpeter was was an immensely readable subject, and an inspiring prosaists who hungered for fame, and whose economic history was impressive, all reasons why you must buy the book and keep it prominently on your book shelf, but he was a flawed economist driven to the wrong conclusions (from reparations to the sustainability of capitalism). His grandiosity was Churchillian, as was his sense of history and society, but unlike Winston Churchill, fate never gave Schumpeter the chance to correct for a lifetime of grandiose errors.

The Basic Paradox of Capitalism.......2007-04-24

As I recently read Thomas K. McCraw's brilliant biography of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), I was intrigued by the evolution of his career after he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Vienna (1906). At age 24, he served as a secretary of state for finance in the new Austrian republic (1919-1920), and later became chairman and president of a Vienna-based Biederman Bank (1920-1924) that collapsed. As a result of that and several substantial investments in companies which also failed, Schumpeter suffered major financial setbacks (both professional and personal) but eventually repaid his debts, then taught at the University of Bonn (1925-1932) before accepting an offer to join the Harvard faculty as a professor of economics where he continued to teach until his death in 1950. McCraw also examines Schumpeter's personal life that, understandably, reflected the successes and failures in his career. For example, Schumpeter fell deeply in love with Anna Josifina Reisinger and married her in 1925. The next year, his beloved mother died and within a month, his wife died in childbirth, as did their son. McCraw suggests that Schumpeter never fully recovered from these personal losses.

Of greatest interest to me is the context or frame-of-reference the biographical material provides for one of Schumpeter's most influential business concepts, "creative destruction," which he introduced in his most popular book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy," first published in 1942. Scholars have divided opinions as to the influences on Schumpeter's development of this concept. They probably include Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Werner Sombart.

According to Schumpeter, there is a "process of industrial mutation-if I may use that biological term-that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in." He goes on to explain, "The first thing to go is the traditional conception of the modus operandi of competition. Economists are at long last emerging from the stage in which price competition was all they saw. As soon as quality competition and sales effort are admitted into the sacred precincts of theory, the price variable is ousted from its dominant position. However, it is still competition within a rigid pattern of invariant conditions, methods of production and forms of industrial organization in particular, that practically monopolizes attention. But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance) - competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives." (from "The Process of Creative Destruction," 1942) There are countless examples of applications of this concept, notably Jack Welch's determination to "blow up" GE after he succeeded Reginald Jones as CEO.

In his own review of Prophet of Innovation in the Wall Street Journal, Dan Seligman includes Schumpeter's widely quoted question-and-answer sequence: "Can capitalism survive? No, I do not think it can." Seligman then suggests that that answer "is hedged in later passages [in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy]. Even so, it will seem wildly counterintuitive to readers who have read Schumpeter on capitalism's huge successes." I agree. In fact, I presume to suggest that, from Schumpeter's perspective, no form of capitalism can survive and that continuous replacement of one form of capitalism by another confirms the enduring reality of creative destruction. Without it, there can be no innovation. In essence, that is the basic paradox of capitalism.

The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation

Average customer rating:

The Elegant Solution
Nice stories, little new content
Good nuggets, lots of fluff, some really sloppy thinking
"Keep it lean. Scale it back, make it simple, and let it flow."
Easy Reading

The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation
Matthew E. May
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

Industry | Automotive | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Foreign | Automotive | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Toyota Talent
The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology
Product Development for the Lean Enterprise: Why Toyota's System Is Four Times More Productive and How You Can Implement It
Inside the Mind of Toyota: Management Principles for Enduring Growth
Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future

ASIN: 0743290178

Book Description

"Toyota is becoming a double threat: the world's finest manufacturer and a truly great innovator . . . that formula, a combination of production prowess and technical innovation, is an unbeatable recipe for success."

-- Fortune, February 2006

For the first time, an insider reveals the formula behind Toyota's unceasing quest to innovate and do more with less, a philosophy that has made it one of the ten most profitable companies in the world (and worth more than GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and Honda combined). In a rare look into Toyota's ability to consistently achieve breakthroughs that outperform the competition, The Elegant Solution explains what Toyota associates have known all along: it's not about the cars. Rather, Toyota's astounding success is just the visible result of a hidden creative process that begins with a seven-digit number.

One million. That's how many new ideas the Toyota organization implements every year. These ideas come from every level of the organization -- from the factory floors to the corporate suites. And organizations all over the world want to learn how it's done. Now senior University of Toyota advisor Matthew May shows how any company can achieve an environment of everyday innovation and discover the kinds of elegant solutions that hold the power to change the game forever. World-class benchmarks like Lexus, Prius, Scion -- even Toyota's vaunted production system -- are simply shining examples of elegant solutions.

A tactical playbook for team-based innovation, The Elegant Solution delivers powerful lessons in breakthrough thinking in a provocative yet practical guide to the three core principles and ten key practices that shape successful business innovation. Innovation isn't just about technology -- it's about value, opportunity, and impact. When a company embeds a real discipline around tapping ingenuity in the pursuit of perfection, the sky is the limit. Dozens of case studies (from Toyota and other companies) illustrate the universal power and applicability of these concepts. A unique "clamshell strategy" prepares managers to successfully lead and sustain the innovation effort.

At once a thought-starter and a taskmaster, The Elegant Solution is a vital prescription for anyone wanting to truly master business innovation.

Customer Reviews:

The Elegant Solution.......2007-10-08

This is an excellent (and yes, elegant) overview of the Toyota quality "mindset." The book is a "must read" for for anyone interested in business strategy development. The book offers a readable summary of the principles of the Toyota Way with an emphasis on the development of the Lexus and Prius lines including practical examples of the elements of the approach advocated. When a company has amassed assets greater than GM, Ford, Chrysler, VW and Honda combined, their approach may be worth deeper study. I highly recommend this practical, important, and very readable book.

Nice stories, little new content.......2007-08-27

I excepted a lot from the elegant solution. It has been recommended by a lot of persons as a must read. Honestly, I was dissapointed. It's still an good book, but didn't find it as "classic" as people had suggested to me.

"The elegant solution" is about tools for creating innovation on your job. These tools are based on Toyota's tools and practices. The book is devided in three parts. The first part sets three general principles. The second part, by far the largest, provides the tools for innovation, the practices. The last part talks about implementing these practices.

The three principles are "the art of ingenuity", "pursuit of perfection" and "rhythm of fit". They were interesting principles, but not really new or shocking. Sometimes I found them even a little too vague.

The practices range from "thinking in pictures" to "master the tension". Each chapter shortly states the practice and explains the key ideas. After that it uses stories to clarify the practice. Lot's of stories are from inside Toyota. Some stories related to Lance Armstrong, a little too many in my opinion and they were somewhat boring. Anyways, in general, the stories were what made the book interesting.

The third part didn't provide very much content.

In summary, I enjoyed the book, for the stories. I didn't find the practices new and the book didn't provided me with any new insight that other lean books did not provide. The book was written a little bit too much in a "popular style" which annoyed me.

Worth reading for the stories. When wanting to know more on lean or toyota I'd recommend other books like "Toyota way" or "Lean product and process development".

Good nuggets, lots of fluff, some really sloppy thinking.......2007-08-22

I came to this book via the Shampoo Problem that's been floating around the internet these past couple of weeks (which he published in his Change This manifesto). The puzzle is this - a high-end health club puts nice shampoo in their showers, but customers keep stealing it. How do you implement a solution that takes no time to implement, doesn't inconvenience customers at all, and doesn't require any money? That's a lot of constrictions, but the author claims it can be done! (you can search for the answer yourself, I don't want to spoil your fun.)

The question itself reminded me of so many bad professors who would ask totally subjective questions and disregard legitimate answers until they found someone who agreed with them. "Who can give me an example of an apple that's tasty? Macintosh? No too sweet. Granny smith? No too bitter. Golden delicious? Why yes Bobby, you get a star."

This is the tone in my head while I read the book - condescending. Maybe he didn't write it that way, but that's how I'm reading it, and honestly, it fits. On page 21 he chides psychologists for loving "to explain our uniquely hardwired capabilities in hugely complex terms. Sixteen types, thirty-four strengths, etc." and then goes on to give his "easier, more elegant" (but no less arbitrary "four basic buckets of natural ability." (Four because the ancient Greeks loved the number four.) Of course, what he fails to mention is that the psychologists he's referring to all write for pop magazines like Cosmopolitan and their articles appear alongside such classics as "10 ways to improve your sex life" and "5 ways to tell if your man is cheating on you." He also never mentions the "four basic buckets of natural ability" again and they have absolutely no bearing on the rest of the book. (The book is filled with useless random made up facts like those.)

He also throws out sentences that have huge presumptions built in to them, but have absolutely no evidence to back them up. Stuff that, in a seminar you wouldn't want to question him on because "there is no right answer" or the facts are obscure enough that he could bluster his way though most arguments that weren't from an expert on the subject. In book form, though, and knowing better myself, I read this stuff and think "well there's a very poor and inaccurate description." Luckily there's an only 50% chance that even the next sentence will depend on you agreeing with that statement, much less the next page.

In a later section he rehashes "the scientific method" (I put it in quotes because he botched his basic characterization of it) and compares it to other four step iterative processes, mostly those developed by the military - Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA), Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA), Scan-Analyze-Respond-Assess (SARA), etc. and comes up with his own version, cleverly called IDEA - Investigate, Design, Execute, Adjust. It's not much different than the others, but it's his and he can teach it in seminars as his own. FWIW, "While Toyota officially recognizes only PDCA (not IDEA), they actually use all of these (methodologies) to some degree." (page 73-4)

Well of course they use all of the methodologies to some degree - they all describe the same basic thing, and very few organizations are so button-down that they actually only use a single methodology and follow it to the letter each time.

The very next sentence is "Let's look closer at the process." But that's pretty much the last time PDCA is mentioned in the book, the next section is about process in general and why it's good to "Insist on a common approach."

Another example of sloppy leaps in logic and condescending attitude is the Edsel. (page 93) Ford did their research and designed a car that people would want - except nobody wanted it. Why? "The problem was, all the research was based on a forty-year-old market belief... that buyers fell into one of four income segments: low, low-middle, upper-middle, and upper... Except markets don't think that way. When it comes to cars, consumers were thinking `lifestyle,' not income."

I like how he swaps an old marketing tool for a modern one as if that's the answer to all the world's problems. Lifestyle marketing was originated in the 70's and 80's as a result of - surprise surprise - new market research techniques developed by psychologists who were using statistical analysis more and more in their psychological research. (I wonder if he thinks those psychologists are too complex now.)

He also utterly fails to get into the concept of lifestyle marketing - he tells you why the Edsel failed, and what they should have done, (or his completely arbitrary and baseless versions of them) but what they should have done is literally one word. "lifestyle." Shame on Ford in the 1950's for not using an 80's marketing concept to understand how the market thinks. Why didn't they use the word "lifestyle" instead - then the Edsel would have been a huge success.

Hansei is another example of this sloppy, condescending thinking. "Hansei is the rigorous review conducted after action has been taken. It's a huge and absolutely vital part of learning. And with few exceptions, our Western culture is just plain miserable at it." Of course there's not one mention of the term "post-mortem" which is a western term and performs the exact same function. Sure most businesses don't do it (most businesses don't follow a lot of best practices), but don't pretend that Toyota or "Eastern culture" somehow invented the concept and that nobody in the west does it. If there's an existing best practice that we understand, then why not just tell us about it rather than pretending that it came from the fount of the Toyota godhead?

"Ford hadn't gone to the field to see what was actually happening. They remained in the office and believed the data. Big mistake. The Edsel was dead on arrival, a complete and utter failure."

Of course the next chapter is about how Toyota did the same basic thing, but managed to succeed. Their data told them that the youth of today would be the car buyers of tomorrow (startling, I know). The case study for the Scion reveals absolutely nothing about the techniques they used to study the market - it's the after report.

"Where are these kids going to buy the car? There's no time or money for new stores. That's a problem. That means they go to a Toyota store. Okay, so they'll know it's a Toyota. How do we get around that? Think? We don't. It's not the ugly stepchild. It's legit, but different. It's Scion, offspring of Toyota. Don't ignore the Toyota link, it's got cred...."

Note the use of the magical word "Think" in that paragraph. He totally neglects to address what "Think" means. Think is the Elegant part of the solution (he also likes the word "Intuitive" and uses it liberally), yet he doesn't describe it at all.

"Think" is where all the magic happens. Katie Lucas calls this the "Run really, really fast" step for "how to win a marathon" methodologies. It's the step where all the real difficult, nitty-gritty stuff magically happens. South Park summarizes it "Step 1: Steal underpants. Step 2...... Step 3: Profit."

Ostensibly the whole book is about that one word "Think" but the tools he provides - the IDEA loop, mind mapping, story boarding are nothing new, and the book is utterly lacking a cohesive whole. They're just scattered ideas, praised one second, and then dropped in the next chapter. He even mentions the Toyota "dashboard" which is a tool for getting a quick overview of a problem - except he (again) utterly fails in to a dashboard. "Dashboard" doesn't even appear in the index of the book, and if it did, the only occurrence would be on page 113.

Here's all the text on page 113. "Creative Visual Control - Visual control is an integral part of Toyota's methodology. The Project Management Office of Toyota's North American Parts Operation (NAPO) used creative visual `dashboards' to track performance in their Stretch Goals Initiative (see Chapter 9)."

Chapter 9 is on how to stretch goals, not about dashboards. He clearly states "Visual control is an integral part of Toyota's methodology" yet it's explained nowhere in the book in any depth.

In fairness, Toyota did do something Ford didn't do (or at least something he claims Ford didn't do) - they got to know their market. Really engage them and have a conversation with them. Learn about them, and let those learnings drive their product, and he does get into that in the book.

The main thrust of the book - if I can understand it all because it's couched in so many superlatives and it jumps from topic to topic so fast that it's really difficult to tease core themes out - seems to be something like: Move forward by getting hands-on experience with your product and your customers. Don't dictate strategy based on numbers alone, or build bureaucracies - get down and dirty and get to know the product you're selling and get to know the marketplace. Come up with grand "elegant" visions for the future, but innovate little by little - tiniest bit by tiniest bit. Listen to everyone and implement every good idea, then standardize it so that the whole company benefits. Don't let the numbers do all the talking; learn the context, the story behind the numbers. Which is a pretty good message, and he does give you some tools to do that, but the tools are often vague, and you feel that the real tools are mentioned only in passing.

The subtitle of the book is "Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation." If this book was about the "formula" for Coca-Cola, it would say something like "cola syrup and seltzer" and go on about the intuitive and elegant way they matched cola syrup to the bubbling process and created a dynamic new soft drink and how the other soft drink companies of the day - lemonade, sugar-water and apple-juice - failed to really understand the problem, which is why they didn't come up with the cola + seltzer combination first and why they lost so much market share. (If only apple juice had thought "lifestyle" instead of "income segment!")

Overall, it's an okay read and a decent introduction to the subject of business innovation, though for a book that's supposedly written by a guy who's on the ground floor with this stuff, I would expect a *lot* more meat and a lot less fluff. Get it if you think you'll like it, but don't expect as much as the other reviewers seem to be hinting at.

"Keep it lean. Scale it back, make it simple, and let it flow.".......2007-05-22

The subtitle of this book ("Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation") is not inaccurate but somewhat misleading. Although, yes, Matthew E. May has much of interest and value to say about the Toyota Production System, his attention is by no means limited to it and to the remarkable organization within which it was developed and within which it continues to flourish. Today, Toyota is one of the ten most profitable companies in the world and worth more than General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and Honda...combined. Obviously there are reasons for such extraordinary success but it would be incorrect to assume that other organizations can achieve the same success once they know what Toyota's "formula for mastering innovation" is.

What about this book's title? According to May, "Elegance isn't about being hoity-toity. It's not about lofty concepts and grand designs. It's not about beauty or grace, or anything to do with aesthetics - ugly is okay. Elegance is about something much more profound. It's about finding the `aha' solution to a problem with the greatest parsimony of effort and expense. Creativity plays a part. Simplicity plays a part. Intelligence plays a part. Add in subtlety, economy, and quality, and you get elegance...Elegant solutions relieve creative tension by solving the problem in finito as it's been defined, in a way that avoids creating other problems that then need to be solved. Elegant solutions render only new possibilities to chase and exploit. Finally, elegant solutions aren't obvious, except, of course, in retrospect."

Elegant solutions include library, paper money, pencil, wallet, wristwatch, icebox, mortgage, Social Security, credit card, cell phone, and auto leasing. These and other elegant solutions, as May correctly points out, "universally change the world's attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and habits." Efforts to formulate elegant solutions are guided and informed by three principles: ingenuity in craft, pursuit of perfection, and fit with society. "They're the raison d'etre at Toyota, and nonnegotiable."

Earlier, I suggested that this book takes a close look at the mindset and the process by which Toyota continues to formulate elegant solutions. In fact, the Toyota organization implements a million ideas a year. May also includes within his narrative dozens of non-Toyota cases that indicate that none of the individual concepts are new, or even unique to Toyota. All organizations that formulate elegant solutions have people at all levels and in all areas of operation who possess both an ability and a determination to collectively and completely master all of the concepts as "a way of life, not a program centered on select teams led by specialists with artificial agendas."

But what about much smaller organizations, especially those with severely limited resources? Decision-makers in those organizations will be delighted (and perhaps surprised) to find that May provides a wealth of material that they can immediately put to use, once they understand the "deeper principles" that he discusses in Part I and the "ten key practices supported by tools and techniques" that he discusses in Part II. Then in Part III, May explains "how to put the practices and tools together well to achieve a [desired] result." He helps his reader to track the course of an exemplary team through a day of searching for the elegant solution.

For me, some of the most interesting and valuable material is provided in Chapter 12, "Make Kaizen Mandatory," as May poses again (as he does in other chapters) a combination of Problem, Cause, and Solution:

Problem: Innovation is hit or miss.
Cause: Creativity is misdirected and mismanaged.
Solution: Embed the kaizen ethic.

After a brief review of the factors that came together to help embed the kaizen ethic in Japanese business ethic during the decade or so following World War Two, he goes on to explain that at companies such as Toyota, the key issue is that they view kaizen in terms of standards that are created by the individuals performing the work, and, that standards are dynamic, and not everything gets standardized. These companies establish a best practice, document the standard, and train accordingly. Then in the next chapter, May shares his thoughts about "the power of lean" thinking and execution that reduce (if not eliminate) inconsistency, overload, and (most important) waste. Here is another combination:

Problem: Too many, too much - of everything.
Cause: Assumption that more is better.
Solution: Start thinking lean.

Once again, when it comes to innovation and designing solutions, the emphasis remains the same: "whatever you do, keep it lean. Scale it back, make it simple, and let it flow."

And that is what elegance really is all about.

Easy Reading.......2007-03-25

A must read for learning how to implement and sustain continuous improvement enabking lean to become part of the compny's culture

Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation

Average customer rating:

Solid idea; very weak exposition
Freshman overview
I must have read a different book
Business libraries and business managers will find it inspirational.
Leading Beyone Where The Numbers Can Tell You

Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation
James P. Andrew , Harold L. Sirkin , and John Butman
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Nanotechnology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

Innovations | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning
Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It
The Strategy Paradox: Why committing to success leads to failure (and what to do about it)
Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want

ASIN: 1422103137

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Solid idea; very weak exposition.......2007-05-24

This book bears all the weaknesses one expects from management consultants. It has a solid core concept, the cash curve, and a very simple graph to go with it. Virtually everything worth knowing gets said in the first 50 pages of the book.

What follows is a logical, step by step exposition of each point in more detail using selected examples from the authors' consulting experience. Sadly, no single customer example is longer than four pages, and details are sparsely strewn. It is especially noteworthy that they graphic of the key concept, the cash curve, is wholly absent from the second (much longer) half of the book.

One also gets the feeling that if the authors had had different customer engagements, they would have come to different conclusions. For instance, they discuss how Intel practices the integration business model in their chip business. However, virtually every other semiconductor company of any note on the planet is using outside factories (fabs in semiconductor parlance). Many, such as Qualcomm and Broadcom just to pick two examples have built market capitalizations in the tens of billions of dollars practicing the orchestration business model. It would have been very instructive to compare and contrast how two different models in essentially the same business can both lead to outstanding results for investors. Sadly, that discussion is wholly absent.

In summary, the core principal of the book is a very important one. I cannot think of a single business that could become a big success not understanding it. However, the lack of details in the customer examples keeps this book from realizing anywhere close to its real potential.

Freshman overview.......2007-05-14

Don't expect any insight into the process of innovation. Payback provides a freshman-level overview of innovation taking place in various companies, but is not a source of insight into the process. Years after the results of internal policies of many companies have become apparent to the business World, the author merely points to seeming successes and says "Do That", and to the failures "Don't Do That".
There is a decent comparison of the Integrator, Orchestrator, and Licensor models and some of the issues facing decision makers. Look for this around the middle of the book.
For a far more profound study that is immediately useful there is probably nothing better than Christensen's Innovator's Solution - cover-to-cover. Payback lacks any reference at all to many of the biggest challenges to implementing policies and deriving return in the market place, from innovation. Beginning with Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, learn first of all why established companies get stuck in a rut of satisfying the demands of existing customers and simply cannot produce new products and services that really will produce big paybacks. Learn also the big difference between sustaining innovations and disruptive innovations. Discussing payback without this understanding is like studying Rocks without studying Geology.

I must have read a different book.......2007-04-09

Based on the other reviews I must have read a different book. But seriously Payback bills itself on the ideas behind creating practical and actionable innovation, how else could you meet the promise of 'reaping the rewards of innovation.'

Unfortunately the rewards they are talking about are all in terms of cash and profits making this book a 101 finance book built around the authors notion of the Cash Curve with the following basic tenants:

- don't spend to much to create an idea because that consumes upfront cash
- don't take too long to commercialize and bring the idea to market
- get your idea into volume production as soon as possible
- support the idea with a measured post launch investment.

Sorry but that's it. The book is heavy on the finance 101 side and extremely light on the idea of practices and ideas. Sure they say that you can play different role: innovation integrator, orchestrator, or liscensor but you pretty much know what the authors are going to say just by the role names.

The book does have an number of case studies, many that are available in the public domain, however these cases are more narrative telling you what happened without being analytical and telling you why the did this or that and the result it took.

Overall this book is very light on the ideas and actions required to deliver the rewards of innovation because it treats innovation as a financing event that is intended to generate cash. While that view is true, there is allot of insight, actions and practices that must happen before we can start thinking about how to get cash out of an innovation. I only hoped that the authors had taken the time to tell us that.

Business libraries and business managers will find it inspirational........2007-03-12

Written by professional consultants James P. Andrew and Harold L. Sirkin, Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation is a solid guide to the difference between having a good idea and turning that idea into financial reward. Payback puts forth the argument that the biggest challenge facing most companies today is their need to increase returns from their innovation spending. Introducing a concept called the "cash curve", Payback explores the fundamental factors that affect how much financial return will be netted. From how and when it can be profitable to apply innovation to noncash goals (such as the acquisition of new knowledge or enhancement of the company's brand), to models that accurately assess financial, technical and market risks to the relative advantages and disadvantages of the integration, orchestration, and licensing models and when to employ each, Payback is a reservoir of solid, high-stakes insight into skilled decision making. As valuable for innovative small business owners as for managers of grand enterprises.

Leading Beyone Where The Numbers Can Tell You.......2007-02-18

Innovation is one of the biggest problems facing companies today. This book does an excellent job of analyzing innovation into various types of companies and showing several examples of successful and unsuccessful companies.

The authors break innovation approaches within companies into three broad categories:

1. The Integrator - Here is where a company has a core competence and they hold the developement very close to their chest. The example they use is BMW who has a core technology in engines that they protect as much as they possibly can. Afer discussing a couple of other successes they then discuss Polaroid who attempted to move from film to digital cameras but failed.

2. The Orchestrator - where a company has the broad general idea and the ability to take a product to market but doesn't have the time, expertise, or desire to do this particular design/manufacturing job.

3. The Licensor - Some companies develop technologies that they are not going to take to market themselves. Dolby is the example they use, with technology licensed to various manufacturers. They have become the standard for audio professionals.

These decisions cannot be made by accountants, they take a leader. Someone has to see the potential beyone what the sheer numbers are showing.

A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation

Average customer rating:

Spectacular info... but ah what to do, what to do
Great risk insights, and lots of useful reminders on liquidity mechanics
The Wisdom of the Cockroach
A MUST READ for all financial markets professionals
Demon

A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation
Richard Bookstaber
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Futures | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Capital Ideas Evolving
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in the Global Markets
The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm

ASIN: 0471227277

Book Description

Inside markets, innovation, and risk

Why do markets keep crashing and why are financial crises greater than ever before? As the risk manager to some of the leading firms on Wall Street–from Morgan Stanley to Salomon and Citigroup–and a member of some of the world’s largest hedge funds, from Moore Capital to Ziff Brothers and FrontPoint Partners, Rick Bookstaber has seen the ghost inside the machine and vividly shows us a world that is even riskier than we think. The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the 1987 crash to Citigroup closing the Salomon Arb unit, from staggering losses at UBS to the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, Bookstaber gives readers a front row seat to the management decisions made by some of the most powerful financial figures in the world that led to catastrophe, and describes the impact of his own activities on markets and market crashes. Much of the innovation of the last 30 years has wreaked havoc on the markets and cost trillions of dollars. A Demon of Our Own Design tells the story of man’s attempt to manage market risk and what it has wrought. In the process of showing what we have done, Bookstaber shines a light on what the future holds for a world where capital and power have moved from Wall Street institutions to elite and highly leveraged hedge funds.

Customer Reviews:

Spectacular info... but ah what to do, what to do.......2007-09-22

This book is very well layed out and is an excellent primer on what is going on behind the scenes in the financial markets.

The end is a bit disappointing in that the issues are clearly explicated but the solution seems a bit murky and maybe impossible. The author does acknowledge the difficulty of implementing a truly workable solution.

Great risk insights, and lots of useful reminders on liquidity mechanics .......2007-09-21

A finance-related book like this one is always something I open with a fear of "deja vu". To Bookstaber's credit, his numerous insights quickly got me over this. It is a constant reminder to risk practitioners and traders that liquidity supply is a serious matter. It does indeed move mountains. For new comers into risk management and trading, it explains the sources of the LTCM debacle, and its learnings. By all standards, I recommend this book to any finance graduate, experienced trader, or risk manager. A very useful read.

The Wisdom of the Cockroach.......2007-09-14

In recounting his time as risk manager at a number of prominent houses (Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers, Citigroup etc.), Bookstaber completes the i-banking trifecta. First there was the Michael Lewis classic, Liar's Poker, detailing the juvenile bravado and macho antics of the trading floor. Then Jonathan Knee gave an intimate portrait of the i-banker deal making culture with The Accidental Investment Banker.

And now, in A Demon of Our Own Design, we get a glimpse at the risk management side of things... a sort of master plumber's walking tour through the bowels of the system, with technical descriptions of exactly what happens when pipes burst and boilers explode. (Some will find Bookstabers' level of detail intolerably dull; others will find it quite fascinating. I was in the fascinated camp.)

Nature of the beast

In describing the finer points of risk arbitrage, Bookstaber explains why it's normal -- expected even -- for trading desks to take a good whack every so often. The nature of the beast is to make relatively steady profits, month in and month out, and then give back a chunk of those profits when something goes haywire. (That's how you move huge sums on an arb desk; grind out small bets that are almost guaranteed to work, juice up the returns with leverage, and try not to be in the vicinity when the rare position goes kablooey.)

In light of this general modus operandi, perhaps it isn't surprising that the "quant" funds recently took a major hit (as of September 2007). They had been minting money for an extraordinarily long period, had the leverage to show for it, and now, after the recent "oops," seem to be generally back in business.

In fact it appears natural for much of Wall Street to work in this "make a little, lose a lot" fashion... the key idea being that all the little updrafts make up for the once-in-a-blue-moon downdrafts. (Such calculus works better for the fee collectors than the fee payers, but that's a different kettle of fish.)

Bookstaber's detail-rich description of the various trades that investment houses put on, many of them lasting years, is also enlightening. The details seem to confirm that, by and large, Wall Street is a gigantic, slow moving, conventional-returns type machine. (And what else could it be, really, with such an ocean of capital to allocate and so many jobs to fill? There is only so much creativity and contrarianism to go round.)

A dangerous combination

Risk manager war stories aside, Bookstaber's goal is to hammer home a key philosophical point regarding risk. He wants readers to understand that financial markets are inherently unstable, and this reality places limits on how far we (or anyone) should go in pursuit of outsized returns.

To make his point, Bookstaber uses various analogies to describe how the market is a highly complex, tightly coupled system... and to explain why the combination of high complexity and tight coupling is particularly dangerous.

The counterexample Bookstaber gives of a highly complex, loosely coupled system is the US Postal Service. The USPS has countless potential points of failure and myriad moving parts, but there are no catastrophic linkages involved. A lost package does not set off a disastrous daisy chain of events in which millions of packages are lost.

In contrast, the classic example of a highly complex, tightly coupled system is a nuclear reactor. The reactor is tightly coupled because any point of failure can lead to a knock-on chain reaction; one small thing going wrong can set the entire mechanism on a path to disaster. Being a highly complex, tightly coupled system, the market is less like the postal service and more like the nuclear reactor, in that the combination of aggressive leverage, complex methodologies and heavily interlocking parts leads to significant potential for catastrophe.

Exquisitely adapted

Another serious problem is Wall Street's deeply ingrained tendency to push the envelope. (Richard Lowenstein put it exceptionally well in his book Origins of the Crash: "Finance has its own Peter Principle, by which a successful model will be adapted to progressively riskier causes until it fails.")

In this habit of fighting for every inch of profit, Wall Street is like a self-evolving animal overquick to embrace the particulars of its immediate environment. The more precisely an animal is attuned to a particular "fitness landscape," the better that animal can thrive... in the short term at least, as long as everything stays just so. To be exquisitely adapted (as opposed to robustly adapted) is to be vulnerable to the slightest change.

Thus when the fitness landscape DOES change -- as it inevitably will -- the heavily specialized competitors tend to get crushed (if not go extinct). If a strategy-gone-sour broadsides a large enough group of market participants, the entire financial ecosystem can be thrown into turmoil. When the turmoil from this upheaval spills into the broader economy, wreaking havoc in its wake, the "demon" spoken of in the book's title is unleashed. (As this reviewer interprets it anyway.)

Wisdom of the cockroach

So the problem, in sum, is Wall Street's tendency to `overadapt' to every appealing landscape it encounters, building up complexity and leverage to dangerous levels in doing so.

Bookstaber's suggestion is to heed the wisdom of the cockroach.

The cockroach has survived a longer time span, and a wider variety of harsh environments, than humans could ever match. It is one of the creatures man cannot wipe out no matter how hard he tries. And yet, the cockroach's key risk management strategy is embarrassingly simple... simpler, even, than putting in a stop loss. The deeper point is that simple equals robust; by refusing to get fancy, and sticking with the tried-and-true, the cockroach ensures its reign as champion survivor.

Bookstaber uses the cockroach (and other examples from nature) to argue that we, too, should consider cutting back on our excessively specialized ways. The cost of a rough-edged strategy is forgoing excess profits in accomodative environments... but the benefit is increased likelihood of survival in a much wider range of environments, including the truly harsh ones. (As Jim Grant likes to joke, if so many of these credit-driven vehicles can barely handle prosperity, how are they supposed to fare when adversity hits?)

Harrumphs all round

Bookstaber's finger-wagging solution (be less fancy; take less risk) has the ring of common sense to it, especially in the way it frustrates all those market participants determined to have their cake and eat it too.

For those who seek to wring every last nickel out of the market (as LTCM used to brag of doing), Bookstaber argues persuasively that flying too close to the sun will always be perilous. The commitment to leveraging every edge on a broad scale inevitably leads to disaster-prone configurations, no matter how smart the players.

For those who think the answer is greater regulation of markets, i.e. more rules, Bookstaber shows how extra layers of bureaucracy can actually bring about the exact opposite of the intended affect. Perversely, layers of red tape can (and often do) make a situation more risky, by increasing confusion and complacency simultaneously.

Nor is greater information disclosure the answer. If the market's traditional liquidity providers (traders, market makers, speculators etc.) are forced to disclose their positions to the world in real time, they will react in the manner of poker players forced to play their hands face-up. To the extent that disclosure resolves uncertainty, it also drives market participants from the game. And because "liquidity is a coward" as the old saying goes, always running away when you need it most, strict disclosure rules would likely make bad market conditions worse at the least opportune times.

Some left smiling

Two groups in particular may be left smiling at the end of this book -- value investors and trend followers. In both the theory and practice of their normal operations, value investors and trend followers intuitively embraced Bookstaber's message a long long time ago, favoring longevity and robusticity over the temptations of adjusting to the moment.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that value investors and trend followers are arguably the most profitable market participants by far on an absolute-dollar basis, hauling in hundreds of billions in profit over the course of many decades. They are champion survivors too... with a touch more class than the cockroach.

A MUST READ for all financial markets professionals.......2007-09-13

This is an excellent book. I cannot say enough good things about it. Unquestionably one of the best books on financial markets of the hundreds that I have read. This book provides a ringside view of how the major banks and hedge funds work and why financial risks have become more magnified than before.

Derivatives, trading and hedge funds are here to stay. They perform a valuable service to the financial markets, though Warren Buffet will disagree with me. Nevertheless, it is the mis-use of derivatives and the excessive use of leverage that leads to financial disasters. This book provides an excellent insight into why we witness financial turmoil in some of the most liquid markets.

I strongly recommend it to all MBA finance students as well as to financial markets professionals at hedge funds, prop trading desks, risk managers, quants, bankers, pension fund managers.

Demon.......2007-09-12

I found this book very interesting and full of information I haven't seen elsewhere. A Wall Street "quant" insider's perspective, focused on what can and does go wrong. The author also ties his analysis of famous Wall Street tailspins to other notable failures, including Chernobyl and the Challenger, and finds common themes.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books

China, Inc. by Ted Fishman	Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz	The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz	The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli	The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto