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Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work (Harvard Business School Press) (Harvard Business School Press) (Harvard Business School Press) (Harvard Business School Press) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson, Joseph V. Sinfield, Elizabeth J. Altman
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $12.13
You Save: $22.87 (65%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 12089
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 7.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 1591398460
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4063
EAN: 9781591398462
ASIN: 1591398460
Publication Date: June 23, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
More than a decade ago, Clayton Christensen's breakthrough book The Innovator's Dilemma illustrated how disruptive innovations drive industry transformation and market creation. Christensen's research demonstrated how growth-seeking incumbents must develop the capability to deflect disruptive attacks and seize disruptive opportunities.
In The Innovator's Guide to Growth, Scott Anthony, Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield, and Elizabeth Altman take the subject to the next level: implementation. The authors explain how to create this crucial capability for unlocking disruption's transformational power.
With a foreword by Christensen, this book provides a set of market-proven tools and approaches to innovation that have been honed through fieldwork with innovative companies like Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, Intel, Motorola, SAP, and Cisco Systems. The book shows you how to:
Follow a market-proven process -- so your company can reliably create blockbuster businessesCreate structures, systems, and metrics -- so the disruptive innovations that will power your firm's future growth receive the funding and personnel needed to succeed Create a common language of disruptive innovation -- so managers can reach consensus around counterintuitive courses of action
Incisive and practical, this book helps your company take the steps necessary to benefit from disruption -- instead of being eclipsed by it.
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| Customer Reviews:
Making innovation a regular part of your organization... July 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've read a number of books on innovation, both on a personal and business level. Always looking to find that "edge"... In the book The Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work by Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson, Joseph V. Sinfield, and Elizabeth J. Altman, the authors present a methodology for making disruptive innovation part of your company's culture. Along the way, I had my thoughts twisted a bit as to how best to disrupt the standard playing field, while not going head-to-head with the giants right from the beginning...
Contents:
Introduction: Your Guide to Growth; Precursors to Innovation
Part 1 - Identify Opportunities: Identifying Nonconsumers; Identifying Overshot Customers; Identifying Jobs to Be Done
Part 2 - Formulate and Shape Ideas: Developing Disruptive Ideas; Assessing a Strategy's Fit with a Pattern
Part 3 - Build the Business: Mastering Emergent Strategies; Assembling and Managing Project Teams
Part 4 - Build Capabilities: Organizing to Innovate; Innovation Metrics
Conclusion
Appendix - Frequently Asked Questions; Notes; Index; About the Authors
As you can tell from the list of chapters, the authors cover everything from identifying ideas and potential products that would be disruptive clear through to the end where you have a formal organization that can grow and repeat successes in that area. Given their experience in the field, you avoid making mistakes that are all too common and sound correct, but end up being wrong. For instance, companies have a tendency to throw massive amounts of resources and capital behind a new idea or product that will "revolutionize the industry". The problem is that everyone becomes committed to the initial design and plan, and no thought is given to learning and prototyping along the way. The end result is often a product that completely misses the mark in terms of what people want. But by then, so many millions have been sunk into the design that you can't easily go back. The book instead advocates for quick trials and cheap prototypes without large amounts of funding. That forces creativity and smaller experiments, and permits course changes along the way. Only after you get actual feedback do you commit larger resources to it. But by then, you should know the outcome or have a solid idea as to market acceptance.
For me, I was most interested in the first part of the book. The concept of "overshot customers" was one I hadn't heard of in quite those terms. These are the people who don't need or can't use all the high-end performance built into the product(s) being offered, and are actually looking for something far less. To them, "less" becomes "perfect". Why pay for 100% of a product when all you really need is 10% of it? The other 90% is of no use to you. This is also linked to the concept of "nonconsumers". These are the people who don't use your product (or any product being offered) due to constraints of skill, wealth, access, or time. If you can identify these consumers and serve them, you have an entry into the market that can disrupt the incumbents. Finally, I was also intrigued by the concept of "jobs to be done". It's the adage of "people don't buy drills, they buy holes". If you rethink your product as a service that people are hiring you to do, then you can think beyond the boundaries. An example would be the lowly mop. Not much to do differently there. But if you think that people are hiring you (the mop maker) to clean the house, then you look at the product differently. In this case, it led to the Swiffer line of dust mop accessories. Less effort, easier cleanup, and the job is done more quickly. Hence, people "hire" your product as the superior choice. Interesting concepts...
This is a book that deserves to be sitting on the shelf of management in all companies. Actually, it shouldn't be on the shelf. It should be in the briefcases and backpacks being read...
The book on implemeting disruptive innovation July 18, 2008
So Geoffrey Moore has the Chasm Companion. Now the field of innovative disruption so clearly identified by Clayton Christensen has its own implementation book. Like anything put out by Innosight, Christensen's consulting company, the book is thorough from end to end. If you read nothing else you must read the Summary and FAQs at the end. I read it in two lengthy sittings. It is a fascinating read that starts out talking to established companies like P&G , Intel and RIM. Then it hits its stride and the implementation guides, examples, templates and resources are useful for every company. Yes even start-ups.
IMHO anyone working in tech should have read and review this book, But I am a fan of Christensen's work , and if everyone followed his ideas, there would be less work for my consulting firm. The book is full of great case studies Swiffer, Wii, Skype, YouTube, Metro newspapers, ITunes, Whitestrips, Adwords, eBay. Some great lines. " Medical device cos commoditze doctors". " Look for people with the right school of experience - What problems could arise? Who has encountered these problems?" "What job is the client needing done? "
accessible and practical July 3, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a small business owner I was not sure this book would be relevant for the clientele I serve. I couldn't be more wrong! The book is written in an accessible and easy to understand way, and the strategies are easy to employ. The Innovator's Guide is a book I keep on my desk and refer to again and again. The book contains a wealth of practical tips that I have used to help my business grow! It especially helped us think about how to build the capabilities to innovate more reliably and set management expectations.
I found the entirety of the book practical and applicable, and highly recommend it to any executive or executive team member in both small and large businesses.
 A great strategic guidebook for innovation May 29, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I had the good fortune to meet Scott Anthony and some of the co-authors of The Innovator's Guide to Growth at the Front End of Innovation conference last week. This book presents a number of the concepts from the Christensen series (Innovator's Dilemma, Innovator's Solution, etc) in an approachable, step by step methodology for implementation. In that manner, this book and my book (Make us more Innovative: Critical Factors for Innovation Success) are great companions, since The Innovator's Guide is really focused more on the strategic aspects of understanding how to deploy an innovation capability and align those strategies to corporate goals, while Make us more Innovative is written to detail how to build a complete innovation capability. But enough about my book.
I really liked The Innovator's Guide to Growth because it attempts to take all the great concepts about innovation and break them down into an actual guide that an innovator could follow to bring more innovation to his or her company. This book has a lot of good templates, forms and examples to help a nascent innovation leader define the innovation intent and goals and convince the management team to engage in an ongoing program of innovation.
The book is breaks down into five sections: precursors to innovation, identifying opportunities, formulating and shaping ideas, building the business and supporting systems and structures. Key points from each section:
* A firm can't innovate successfully until it's house is in control and a good game plan is in place
* Many innovation opportunities exist in "nonconsumers" (think the unbanked or un-insured) or in situations where products and services "overmeet" the needs of customers (think Southwest in airlines)
* The chapters on identifying ideas spend a significant amount of time on defining the "jobs" that people want to complete - again harking back to Christensen's books and to the concept of Outcome-Driven innovation which has also been popularized by Strategyn.
* Developing and shaping ideas focuses on refining ideas and targeting opportunities using a strategy map borrowed from Blue Ocean strategy and using innovation techniques such as ideation sessions, analogies and internal and external submissions
* I felt the chapter on assembling and managing project teams was fairly strong and identified a number of good points, especially on the interactions between an innovation team and the executive team, and the innovation team and the rest of the organization
* The chapter on innovation metrics should be must reading for any innovation program
This book takes it's primary focus as disruptive innovation and does not spend much, if any time on any other innovations. It does have a broad definition of the outcomes of innovation (products, services and business models) and does note that many times the most disruptive and most defensible innovation is a business model innovation. It is an especially good book for an executive team that needs to understand how to build an innovation capability and set the appropriate expectations.
There are a few quibbles I have with the book, however. The first two thirds of the book are really loaded with good advice, templates and forms and case studies. Somewhere in the late middle of the book, where the book begins to address refining ideas and building the innovation team, the book begins to become more theoretical and less practical. For example, what kinds of people or skill sets are better or worse for an innovation team? Should innovation be a centralized or decentralized capability? What are the best idea generation methods? What should an innovation process or methodology look like? What are the roles and responsibilities within innovation? These questions are addressed obliquely, if at all, and important topics like rewards and recognition and corporate culture are not addressed at all. Perhaps the team assumed these items are already addressed if the firm has decided to become more innovative.
While I have a number of concerns with the book as a practical methodology for deploying an innovation capability, I can wholeheartedly recommend the book, especially the first six chapters which focus on the alignment of innovation to corporate strategy and intent, and chapter eight, which is about building and managing innovation teams. I think that the segue in the middle and last third of the book from practical advice, templates and forms to more theoretical advice may align to the fact that the actual deployment of these programs is subject to many more variables, but I would have expected a bit more detail in the chapters on organizing to innovate. I will point out that chapter ten on innovation metrics, while a bit short, is an excellent overview and mirrors a lot of good advice on building innovation metrics and the expectations around innovation returns.
This book definitely belongs on the shelf of any executive considering an innovation program or initiative, and on the desk of any innovation leader. This is cross-posted from my blog Innovate on Purpose.
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