Michael Tushman

Charles A. O'Reilly

Andrew Binns

How Corporations Beat Entrepreneurs at the Innovation Game

Corporate Explorers

Philip Anderson

The second edition of this successful book addresses how technologies evolve and how they drive the need for organizational change and adaptation. Focusing on the general-management challenges that innovative firms face, the editors draw from a variety of disciplines and demonstrate the links between innovation, organizational competencies, organizational architectures, executive teams, and managing change.

A Collection of Readings

Managing Strategic Innovation and Change

Michael L. Tushman

Winning through Innovation reveals why short-term corporate success often increases the chance of long-term failure. Drawing on lessons from firms worldwide, this book is the first to provide systematic tools that managers can begin using today to gain practical insights for overcoming the success syndrome, managing innovation, and developing action plans to attain-and maintain-industry leadership. Michael L. Tushman is the MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Charles A. O'Reilly III is the Frank E. Buck Professor of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal

Winning Through Innovation

Charles O’Reilly

In the past few years, a number of well-known firms have failed; think of Blockbuster, Kodak, or RadioShack. When we read about their demise, it often seems inevitable—a natural part of "creative destruction." But closer examination reveals a disturbing truth: Companies large and small are shuttering more quickly than ever. What does it take to buck this trend? The simple answer is: ambidexterity. Firms must remain competitive in their core markets, while also winning in new domains. Innovation guru Clayton M. Christensen has been pessimistic about whether established companies can prevail in the face of disruption, but Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman know they can! The authors explain how shrewd organizations have used an ambidextrous approach to solve their own innovator's dilemma. They contrast these luminaries with companies which—often trapped by their own successes—have been unable to adapt and grow. Drawing on a vast research program and over a decade of helping companies to innovate, the authors present a set of practices to guide firms as they adopt ambidexterity. Top-down and bottom-up leaders are key to this process—a fact too often overlooked in the heated debate about innovation. But not in this case. Readers will come away with a new understanding of how to improve their existing businesses through efficiency, control, and incremental change, while also seizing new markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation rule the day.

How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma

Lead and Disrupt

Corporate Explorers Transform Disruption Into Opportunity With This Proven Framework Innovation used to be seen as a game best left to entrepreneurs, but now a new breed of corporate managers is flipping this logic on its head. These Corporate Explorers have the insight, resilience, and discipline to overcome the obstacles and build new ventures from inside even the largest organizations. Corporate Explorers are part entrepreneurs, using innovation disciplines to jump start cutting-edge ideas, and part change leaders, capable of creating support for investment. They see that corporations already own the ideas, resources, and—critically—the talent to build new ventures. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Bosch, LexisNexis, and Analog Devices enable managers to put these assets to use and gain an upper hand over startups that threaten to disrupt them. Corporate Explorer is a guidebook to the practices that enable these managers to go from idea into action. It demonstrates how success is not only possible but may offer entrenched companies better odds than venture-capital backed startups. This actionable and proven framework explains how managers can become successful corporate innovators; it includes tools to: Learn how to apply innovation practices with greater discipline Turn great ideas into a full-time job as an innovation leader Experiment with and scale original business models Transform innovation programs into a thriving source of new business Attract, retain, and motivate entrepreneurial talent Energize employees by creating a realistic way to innovate These lessons come from the trailblazers of corporate innovation—Andrew Binns (Change Logic), Charles O'Reilly (Stanford Graduate School of Business), and Michael Tushman (Harvard Business School)—who have decades of experience helping entrepreneurial-minded executives activate employees to become Corporate Explorers. Entrepreneurs take notice—it's time for Corporate Explorers to set the pace and chart the course for disruption.

Corporate Explorer

David Nadler

If the defining goal of modern-day business can be isolated to just one item, it would be the search for competitive advantage. And, as everyone in business knows, it's a lot harder than it used to be. On the one hand, competition is more intense than ever--technological innovation, consumer expectations, government deregulation, all combine to create more opportunities for new competitors to change the basic rules of the game. On the other hand, most of the old reliable sources of competitive advantage are drying up: the hallowed strategies employed by GM, IBM, and AT&T to maintain their seemingly unassailable positions of dominance in the 1960s and 70s are as obsolete as the calvary charge. So in this volatile, unstable environment, where can competitive advantage be found? As David Nadler and Michael Tushman show, the last remaining source of truly sustainable competitive advantage lies in "organizational capabilities": the unique ways each organization structures its work and motivates its people to achieve clearly articulated strategic objectives. For too long, too many managers have thought about "organization" merely in terms of rearranging the boxes and lines on an organizational chart--but as Competing by Design clearly illustrates, organizational strength is found far beyond one-dimensional diagrams. Managers must, argue Nadler and Tushman, understand the concepts and learn the skills involved in designing their organization to exploit their inherent strengths. All the reengineering, restructuring, and downsizing in the world will merely destabilize a company if the change doesn't address the fundamental patterns of performance--and if the change doesn't recognize the unique core competencies of that company. In this landmark volume, the authors draw upon specific cases to illustrate the design process in practice as they provide a set of powerful, yet simple tools, for using strategic organization design to gain competitive advantage. They present a design process, explore key decisions managers face, and list the guiding principles for incorporating the design function as a continuing and integral process in organizations that are looking to the future. In 1918, Henry Ford's Dearborn assembly plant was the model of the new assembly-line technology. Today, the assembly plant is an aging relic, but, incredibly, the organizational architecture it spawned lives on in steep hierarchies, centralized bureaucracies, and narrowly defined jobs. As companies are coming to realize they can't compete successfully in the 21st century with organizations based on 19th century ideas, Competing by Design shows clearly and persuasively why--and, most importantly how--to harness the power of organizational architecture to unleash the competitive strengths embedded in each organization.

Michael Tushman

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