Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World by Bhaskar Chakravorti ISBN: 1-57851-780-X Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 12 June, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Paradoxes of Successful Innovation
Comment: As the subtitle correctly indicates, Chakravorti explains how to bring innovations to market in a connected world. His contributions in this book to our understanding of both the difficulties and opportunities to do so are substantial. Acknowledging his academic roots, he acknowledges that he "developed an appreciation for a first- principles approach to strategy and decisions...how first principles translate into the framing of trade-offs and lead to timely action." Over time, he learned that true insight "comes from connecting the dots across multiple landscapes [and that] such dots lurk in the unlikeliest corners." He allows his reader to recognize those "corners" and to accompany him as he carefully but rigorously explores the connected world.
I especially appreciate his dry but delightful wit, perhaps most evident in the final chapter whose head note is a quotation from Thelonious Monk: "You know what's the loudest noise in the world, man? The loudest noise in the world is silence." Without apparent effort, he invites his reader to consider the significance of the Galton-Gould evolutionary pool table, a metaphor which suggests that a market is the polyhedron-shaped ball." perhaps recalling John Nash's insight, he suggests that when innovation arrives on the scene (i.e. in a market), it creates disequilibrium. "It is in this situation of rest [i.e. when the "ball" has stopped] which may be viewed as gridlock by some and as a stable market by others -- that innovations in a connect must pry apart."
Given the process of inquiry and exploration which has been completed in the prior chapters, I was intrigued by how Chakravorti achieves at least a temporary synthesis of so many different (sometimes contradictory) factors which interact throughout the innovation cycle: "the eureka moment; the development of technology to give life to an idea; and the creation of an organization to produce and commercialize the innovation." As we all know, few innovative ideas ever reach their intended market and fewer yet survive thereafter. There is indeed a natural selection process during any campaign to bring an innovation into the connected world. Chakravorti suggests four aspects of that campaign:
1. "Qualifying the endgame and, in the process, choosing between several strategic options at the outset;
2. "Orchestrating the changes necessary across the network of players through a mechanism that propagates the innovator's selective interventions into the wider network;
3. "Actively managing with the critical agents that will pass on the innovation's influence; and
4. "Making appropriate choices on how to commit to strategies that lead to certain endgames in the face of uncertainty -- depending on the situation, one must choose between making a bet, reserving options, and seeking insurance."
Paraphrasing an ancient aphorism, Chakravorti suggests that market imperfection is the mother of innovation because it creates the need to innovate both in terms of a given product or service and in terms of the campaign by which to guide it to market. and then through natural selection to at least temporary security....that is, until another innovation (which accommodates the aforementioned four aspects) eliminates the need for it.
I agree completely with Chakravorti that the "slow pace of change is good news for the strategic innovator. In fact, it is essential news." Obviously, when any organization plans to take a new product or service to market, it faces formidable competition and all manner of challenges, only some of which are posed by competitors. (How many innovative products or services have never survived internal barriers which may include what Jim O'Toole has characterized as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom") In this brilliant book, Chakravorti suggests a number of specific strategies and tactics to help achieve market penetration and eventual success in a connected world. There is also an important lesson to be learned from one of Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare": At least in some situations, only a "slow pace" can achieve "fast change."
Rating: 5
Summary: Fantastic!!!
Comment: I have never in my life read such an insightful book. It clearly lays out the structure of economics and helps diversify the playing field in terms of market infrastructure. Witty and well thought out, a deserved 5 star book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Delightfully written on a truly complex and timely topic
Comment: This is one of the best written books I have read in a long time. The author must have pored over the crafting of every word. It is a serious book and yet it is quite a funny book. Overall it is clear he knows what he is talking about in terms of how real companies act and the game theory behind their actions. And it is about something that most people I know think a lot about. The book is on bringing innovations and new ideas to market. I read it as having much wider social and political consequences because it really does offer a way for us to understand how things work -- or don't -- in our super-connected world. With terrorism and SARS and globalization risks and the proliferation of the internet we are really connected in so many ways. I came away from the Slow Pace of Fast Change with, as the author puts it, a new "mindset" to understand and even strategize in this interconnected reality, where the network is both your best friend and your worst enemy. I know of Moore's law as the rule of the 90s--like everyone else I and everyone else I know lived and breathed it. Slow Pace...will I think give us a rule that may last even longer: Demi Moore's law. Cute, but really quite brilliant if you think about it.
Every chapter in the book helps develop a rich set of ideas interwoven with really well-told tales of strategic games among the best known companies in the world -- and even some that have since flamed out, for reasons the book helped make me understand. The tales of real world games among AT&T, the Chinese, WorldCom, Comcast, Microsoft read like a novel. Even though that particular chapter had the least new material in terms of concepts, the stories and strategic analyses alone made its presence more than worthwhile.
A deceptively easy read but it's deep stuff. I would read it again.
 |
Title: How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate by Andrew Hargadon, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt ISBN: 1578519047 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 05 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
 |
Title: The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor ISBN: 1578518520 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
 |
Title: Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology by Henry William Chesbrough ISBN: 1578518377 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
 |
Title: Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation by Stefan H. Thomke ISBN: 1578517508 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 12 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
 |
Title: What's the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking by Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak, H. James Wilson ISBN: 1578519314 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
