Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life |...

Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life | Gary Hamel | EXCELLENT

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Leading the Revolu...

	Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life Gary Hamel Harvard Business School Press, 2002 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 64 reviews view larger image
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Gary Hamel, world-renowned business thinker and coauthor of Competing for the Future, the book that set the management agenda for the 1990s, now delivers an agenda for the twenty-first century with the national bestseller, Leading the Revolution. Fully revised with a new introduction, this book provides an action plan for any company or individual intent on becoming and staying an industry revolutionary. Hamel argues that the fundamental challenge companies face is reinventing themselves and their industries, not just in times of crisis-but continually.

Based on an extensive study of "gray-haired revolutionaries," including Charles Schwab, Cisco, Virgin, UPS, Semex, and GE Capital, Leading the Revolution shows how companies can continue to grow and thrive, even in ever-changing turbulent world markets.

Distinctive features and benefits to readers:

" Explains the underlying principles of radical innovation

" Explores where revolutionary new business concepts come from

" Identifies the key design criteria for building companies that are activist-friendly and revolution-ready

" Details the steps your company must take to make innovation an enduring capability

Packed with insight and practical advice, Leading the Revolution shows you how to

" Get off the treadmill of incrementalism

" Save your company from becoming a "one-vision wonder"

" Harness the imagination and passion of every employee

" Create vibrant internal markets for ideas, capital, and talent

Leading the Revolution is not a book for cozy corner-office types. It is for everyone who has the guts to act on the knowledge that our heritage is no longer our destiny. This groundbreaking book from the premier business thinker of our time is a call to arms for the dreamers and doers who will lead us into the age of revolution.

AUTHOR BIO: Gary Hamel is a Founder and Chairman of Strategos, and Visiting Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School. He lives in Woodside, California.

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Nonlinear Innovation

With this book, the author brings out the new concept of "nonlinear innovation".
"In a nonlinear world, only nonlinear ideas will create new wealth", he writes. "Radical, nonlinear innovation is the only way to escape the ruthless hypercompetition that has been hammering down margins in industry after industry. Nonlinear innovation requires a company to escape the shackles of precedent and imagine entirely novel solutions to customer needs."
"Whatever you shoot is dead for a while before it starts to stink," Hamel said. "The same goes for same with strategies. How many organization carry this dead thing around with them, unaware of its irrelevancy until it is too late?"
Change itself has changed, Hamel insisted - the pace of it is exponentially faster than it was in the Big Brands era. Motorola missed the shift to wireless technology by only a year, but in so doing lost a strategic war to Nokia.
This book is about 10 fundamental rules that can help companies reach new heights of growth and success:
1) Set unreasonable expectations
2) Stretch your business definition
3) Create a cause, not a business
4) Listen to new voices
5) Design an open market for ideas
6) Offer an open market for capital
7) Open up the market for talent
8) Lower the risks of experimentation
9) Make like a cell - divide and divide
10) Pay your innovators well - really well.
In this book, the author shows excellent awareness on the topic of innovative companies in last few decades. The book has many examples and case studies, which were later used by the other authors of leadership and management literature. For example, the case study "Waking Up IBM: How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue", being the part of the book, and also separately published in HBR, was quoted in the books by Martin Linsky and Ronald A. Heifetz, Anand Sanwal and Gary Crittenden, Peter A. Gloor, Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler, Alain Fayolle, and Wesley B. Truitt, to name a few.
The design of the book is also excellent. It has lots of color photographs, and the layout of the book overall is very innovative.
I highly recommend this book, as well as the author's further publication "The Future of Management".

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EXCELLENT

Exellently written and excellent information.The best thing about this book is that I didn't really need to read it at all!.But most people from CEO's to students do need to read it.I'm not sure that most people can learn from this book as it promotes a mind set you almost need to be born with,and that school,work and society generally try to crush out of you,as the author points out,yet the premise of this book is totally correct,innovation is the only competitive advantage left to leverage in the modern world,or soon will be.The authors writing style is engaging and motivating,it is no B.S.,no punches pulled,straight to the often humourous point.It is skillfully written to get a serious point across in a friendly way.Even though not stated directly,the thing needed in business as well as your personal life is empathy,to customers,employees,to your own coming obsolesence,to new idea's,and death to sentimentality for what worked in the past,thing's most people seem to lack,things the education system aims at crushing.This book attempts to prise open closed minds,it has all the right ingredients,but I can only wish the author good luck in suceeding in getting the message across to the majority.Judging by other reviews its not yet working,people still don't get it.The cynical side of me see's this book as a well crafted introduction to,and motivation to hire the authors consulting firm,but frankly most people will need more help than any book can offer.If you already get it,this book is well articulated and should help you see your own nature better,and give you the confidence to keep conflicting with others and refusing to comform,if you don't get it then this is a good introduction into an open mind and some empathy rather than mindless conformity to old mindless conformity ways of doing things.

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Fast paced, hard hitting

I love the rather blunt, racy tone of this book. Hamel calls for all employees to be activists, to aggressively promote their own ideas for new products or services. The title of the book ''Leading the Revolution'' refers to the need for such activists to be at the forefront of driving innovation in business. For me this book is a nice complement to Good to Great by Jim Collins who talks about how CEOs need to grill their best people for new strategic ideas. Both authors recognize that the CEO can no longer generate all the ideas personally and hence that innovation needs to be bottom-up. Hamel's book would have been even better if he had developed a concept of leadership that showed how being an activist is showing bottom-up leadership and that our understanding of leadership in general needs to change accordingly. A must read however.

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Design rules for innovation

The Internet, says Gary Hamel, has done more than provide another sales channel and communication tool, it has restructured the basic concepts of time and place that business has traditionally depended on. Only companies that continually restructure themselves, and are able to overcome closed-minded, entrenched attitudes will be able to survive and implement the radical innovations necessary to generate wealth in the future. He has outlined ten design rules for innovation:

1. Unreasonable expectations: The beliefs of the organization set the upper limit on how much innovation is possible for the company. Set goals that reflect a higher reach.
2. Elastic business definition: Do not let your company be bound to a narrow self-concept. Searching for unconditional opportunities will expand your opportunity horizon.
3. A cause, not a business: A business can draw strength and courage from allegiance to a transcendent purpose.
4. New voices: Revolutionary strategies must be found by listening to revolutionary voices. Seek input from the youth, the periphery and newcomers.
5. An open market for ideas: Create a dynamic internal market for ideas within the organization.
6. An open market for capital: Don't set hurdle rates for new projects when those projects promise to be innovative, sustainable and financially beneficial.
7. An open market for talent: If you give people the chance to do interesting, innovative work and solid compensation, they will join you and stay with you.
8. Low-risk experimentation: Know how to manage the consequences, if a risk doesn't work out.
9. Cellular division: Divide your company into a large number of revolutionary cells. When your company stops dividing and differentiating, innovation and growth slow.
10. Personal wealth accumulation: If you want an entrepreneurial spirit at your company, you must pay people like entrepreneurs. Offer stock options as incentives.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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