Creative Construction

October 15, 2018
How big companies can innovate.The economist Joseph Schumpeter said companies sow the seeds of their own "creative destruction"--and lose their original purpose--when they innovate. Not so, writes Pisano (Business Administration/Harvard Business School; Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech, 2006, etc.). In this deeply informed book, he describes how large enterprises can succeed at transformative innovation by "systematically creating an innovation strategy, designing an innovation system, and building an innovation culture." He goes on, "big does not always mean ugly. Scale alone is not an impediment to innovative capacity." Nor is acquisition the only road to growth. Even so, innovation is hard work, "akin to renovating a home while living in it." The key is leadership prepared to "exploit" scale; size and age matter far less. Drawing on research and his own consulting experiences, Pisano explains how companies from IBM to Apple have innovated successfully by building their capabilities, identifying unmet customer needs, and working in familiar or unknown terrain, or both, to achieve goals. Driven by his use of vivid examples, the narrative covers the types of innovation, from routine (ready-to-eat salad) to outside the home court (Honda creates HondaJet) to disruptive business model (Uber vs. traditional taxis); details what goes into them; and urges companies to pursue a balanced portfolio of approaches. Especially valuable is the author's discussion of problems faced by multidivisional companies whose expertise is dispersed in independent silos that prevent them from bringing ideas together to exploit opportunities. Sony, for example, was a consumer electronics leader but lacked capacity for integrating its existing knowledge; Apple beat it in developing portable electronic devices. Pisano also examines DuPont's invention of Kevlar, intended as a solution to a tire problem but most effective in stopping a bullet. "Kevlar, it turns out, is a great solution to many problems, just not the particular problem DuPont was focused on solving," he writes.A useful manual for fostering a sustainable culture of change.

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February 1, 2019

Pisano's (Harvard Business Sch.; coauthor, Producing Prosperity) latest book follows works such as Peter F. Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Clayton M. Christensen's The Innovators Dilemma in studying business innovation, strategy, and implementation. What sets Pisano apart is his ability to incorporate contemporary examples alongside academic constructs he has discovered and utilized based on his observations as a consultant. Pisano acknowledges that great strides in innovation do not always translate into success. There are, indeed, paradoxes. While discussing the various strategies for pursuing innovation, the author highlights the need for a corporate culture that can both tolerate failure and eradicate incompetence. The main strength of the work is Pisano's underscoring of innovation as a human activity that calls for attuned management. VERDICT A worthy read for management consultants, executives, and business strategists.--Steven Silkunas, Fernandina Beach, FL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2018
Harvard Business School professor Pisano asserts that large, established corporations are just as able to innovate as small start-ups are by having a strategy, a supportive organizational system, and a culture of innovation. He questions why large enterprises simply acquire smaller companies rather than investing in their own R&D. Using well-known examples, he illustrates why 70 percent of organizational change has failed, and how those that succeeded did so. Examples include how Monsanto went from being an agricultural-chemical company to the world's largest seed company after developing GMOs; how Netflix nimbly outmaneuvered Blockbuster by mailing DVDs and changing again to a streaming-video format; how IBM, when faced with the potential that the highly competitive PC market could replace its mainframe computers, developed cloud computing as a new lease on life; and how Kevlar was originally formulated as a result of DuPont's search for a stronger fiber for automotive tires. Business leaders will find inspiration here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)