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The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks ReviewThe New Age of Innovation is good but miss-titled. This is not a book about how to be innovative. Rather the book advances an idea that all companies must face a world where they deal with customers individually and get their resources globally. The authors drive this home in a mantra of N=1 (there is one customer) and R=G (your resources are global). The N=1 R=G idea is cute and it is used throughout the book,but as you read the book N=1 R=G becomes the rational for everything and therefore nothing.
It is hard to give a book that covers such a breadth of important topics a mediocre review, but I have thought about this and come to the conclusion that this book is O.K. I am glad I read it as there are some good things here, just not to the level that I could heartily recommend it. If you are interested in these ideas and study the subject of enterprise strategy and management, then please buy this book as it will round out your experience. If you are looking for innovative ideas, then I am sorry this is not the book for you - in my opinion.
Besides the book not being about innovation, or really about how you drive co-created value, it is pretty good with some very good ideas. Prahalad and Krishnan start with an interesting premise - that all markets are not individual and that no company will have all the resources at its disposal to serve those individual markets. Put that way it provides a fresh way of thinking about global business. However that fresh thinking quickly devolves into a way of explaining a large range of business decisions from Wal-Mart to UPS, to GM to ICICI and others. I am always suspicious when a framework can cover such a diverse set of companies - not that the framework is poor, but rather that it is capturing something that we already know and have already dealt with. That is more the case in this book and the reason why it gets only 3 stars.
This book had the potential to redefine some basic tenants of corporate thinking - in other words extend beyond Treacy and Wiersema value disciplines. The N=1 R=G is a simple framework that requires blending multiple disciplines to delivery. However, the book does not do that - rather it advances the idea of intergration across all fronts without a target destination. This makes the book comprehensive, but it also makes it disjointed in some areas and therefore difficult to see how it would really apply to my company or my situation.
Strengths:
The presentation of these two ideas (customer centrality and global sourcing) is strength in that these issues are rarely discussed in an integrated fashion.
Incorporation of a comprehensive view of the enterprise including its business processes, analytics/information, information technology and social/managerial technologies. Few books have ever looked at the enterprise from such a multi-faceted view.
Chapter 6 on efficiency and flexibility, it should have been the second chapter of the book as it puts the N=1 R=G into a set of clear management decisions.
The book highlights the need for the interconnectedness of the issues involved. It continually points to the need for process connectedness, visibility and transparency. It also points out the need to address decisions that are often thought of as contradictory (chapter 6) and the tools in figure 4.3 (p. 129)
Weaknesses:
The discussion of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is bold in its vision but very weak in its implementation. (See Chapter 4 review) The book talks about ICT in a major way in three chapters and not the same way in any of them.
Using multiple titles and tags for roughly the same thing which makes it unnecessarily complicated. This is seen in the way the book tries to redefine issues like business process transformation, capabilities, components, change management etc. It would have been better to use standard terms and then talked about the new insight based on the ideas of the book.
It is true that India is a hot bed of innovation and growth but to imply that Indian companies are primarily the ones that get these ideas is a bit uneven. There are many innovative and market capturing companies in India (ICICI is one that we all need to study and understand). However, the authors keep returning to these companies as the prime examples of what success will look like. This refocusing, particularly on the Indian software industry, weakens the book as it gives the reader with the miss-impression that all I need is an educated, cheap and plentiful labor source and my problems are solved - that is too simplistic and undercuts what these leaders have done.
References as there is neither a single footnote nor source in the book, when several sections are clearly based on work that I have read before. I am not saying that they are copying these materials; rather some references would have been nice and more professional. The discussion of Li & Fung is an example as much of that material was covered in a Wall Street Journal article a few years ago.
The book appears to contradict itself in several areas. The discussion of IT throughout is one also the case examples can be viewed as contradictory, particularly the use of North American and European Companies whose actions can be just as easily explained using other frameworks (Wal-Mart, UPS, ING, etc)
CHAPTER REVIEW
On a chapter by chapter level there are some good ideas - the reason it is not a one star recommendation. So if you pick up the book here is where to concentrate and here is where to be on the lookout.
Chapter 1: The Transformation of Business is a good chapter that lays out the basic premise that the focus of value is on the `centrality of the individual'. At the same time the focus of the firm is on realizing that it must "focus on access to resources not ownership of them." This is not new news, but putting the two ideas together does spark some new thinking.
Chapter 2: Business Processes should have been a killer chapter and provided a basis for repositioning process in the internet era. It did not, first it defines processes as the expression of strategy - leaving out the customer which is interesting given that N=1. Instead of focusing on process, the chapter talks about IT and the layers of IT. The chapter has a good review of ICICI - an Indian financial services company.
Chapter 3: Analytics highlights the central role that information plays in serving customers as individuals using a global network. But rather than telling you how to use information, run the business based on information, it dwells on the analytics/visibility/transparency. The chapter misses a chance to redefine management by discussing the qualities of information rather than its application and impact.
Chapter 4 IT Matters is a call for component based systems and technologies. This chapter is the most disappointing as it is filled with generalized statements regarding what IT should do and be rather than how to deliver it. If you have read books about object oriented and component based development before then you have read much of this chapter. Sorry but this chapter reads like someone who has read a lot about IT and talks about IT but does not practice it - too theoretical and aspirational
Chapter 5: Organizational Legacies starts out like a gem by highlighting the need to understand the dominant language that forms the context and the basis for managerial points of view and change management. The first part of this chapter is good; the back half looks to redefine what the book says about IT from Chapter 4 and seeks to redefine change management practices which were not needed.
Chapter 6: Efficiency and Flexibility highlights the central challenge of implementing the ideas behind N=1 and R=G how to gain the efficiency needed to serve customers at a profit and be able to meet their changing needs and changing capabilities in the supply chain. This chapter dwells too much on it being a trade off, and again returns to IT as a disconnect.
Chapter 7: Dynamic Reconfiguration of Talent discusses the people issues which are critical to making this work. If this chapter did not exist, then the book would have been another diatribe for strategy and technology.
Chapter 8: An Agenda for Managers brings all these ideas together and highlights a 12 point agenda for managers to look at. The authors believe that N=1 and R=G will be here by 2015 - sorry to say that in many industries it is here now.
If you have read this far, then thanks for considering this review. It is a good book, one that I am smarter for having read, but it is not a great book and not one I can recommend you clear the decks to read.
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