Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World [Hardcover]

Charles Grantham (Author), James P. Ware (Author), Cory Williamson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2007

The rules are changing. The work we do -- and where and how we do it -- is undergoing a revolution. In order to thrive in the global economy, companies need a whole new business model--one that enables them to embrace new technology, understand the ever-changing workforce, and rethink the way they structure work environments. Corporate Agility provides the blueprint. The authors are founders of the Work Design Collaborative, a renowned think tank that helps companies become more productive. In Corporate Agility, they share the results of their ground-breaking five-year research project and the forward-thinking strategies that have grown out of this new knowledge. Readers will discover how to: Reduce fixed operational costs to remain competitive in the global marketplace Institutionalize the innovation process to quickly react to a changing marketplace Confront the coming "talent gap" for creative and knowledge-based workers Filled with case studies of companies that have learned to stay ahead of the curve and interviews with their top executives, Corporate Agility will help every company ensure that it stays profitable and sustainable for years to come.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

The rules are changing. The work we do -- and where and how we do it -- is undergoing a revolution. In order to thrive in the global economy, companies need a whole new business model–one that enables them to embrace new technology, understand the ever-changing workforce, and rethink the way they structure work environments. Corporate Agility provides the blueprint.

The authors are founders of the Work Design Collaborative, a renowned think tank that helps companies become more productive. In Corporate Agility, they share the results of their ground-breaking five-year research project and the forward-thinking strategies that have grown out of this new knowledge. Readers will discover how to:

* reduce fixed operational costs to remain competitive in the global marketplace

* institutionalize the innovation process to quickly react to a changing marketplace

* confront the coming "talent gap" for creative and knowledge-based workers

Filled with case studies of companies that have learned to stay ahead of the curve and interviews with their top executives, Corporate Agility will help every company ensure that it stays profitable and sustainable for years to come.

About the Author

Charles Grantham (Prescott, AZ) and Jim Ware (Berkeley, CA) are the founders of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program, whose members include Boeing, Accenture, and Intel. They have been featured in Fast Company and Business Week. Cory Williamson (Croton-on-Hudson, NY) is an author and talent agent.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM (September 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814409113
• ISBN-13: 978-0814409114
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #976,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What every CEO should know, December 4, 2007

By 

Elizabeth (Norwood, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World (Hardcover)

As I researched experts on business and workforce agility for our upcoming event in April, I came across this book. The authors provide a very interesting look at how companies can be successful in a business climate that changes almost daily. They point out that being able to adapt in this rapid-fire environment requires agility and they take you through case studies that illustrate best practices and innovative ideas in helping to achieve agility.

Business leaders need to take the pulse of their company's agility level and this book is a great place to start.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to avoid or overcome "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom", December 28, 2007

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World (Hardcover)

In the Introduction, Charles Grantham, James Ware, and Cory Williamson explain that they assembled a small group of thought leaders from major corporations and collaborated with them when conducting a survey among decision-makers in both labor and management "to discover how new technologies, the changing workforce, and economic globalization were changing how and where people worked, and what those changes meant to the future of work in the so-called Information Economy." The survey responses confirmed what they had only suspected previously: "most businesses had been unable, or unwilling, to adapt their traditional management styles to the new conditions." Various factors resulted in a crippling loss of corporate agility. "These Industrial-Age behemoths are often referred to as corporate dinosaurs, in an effort to describe just how slow and unwieldy they really are - to say nothing of being nearly extinct - and there may be even more truth and insight contained in that image than anyone ever intended."

Grantham, Ware, and Williamson pose an especially interesting question: How can a business evolve from being a dinosaur to a jaguar, and do so in the space of months, not millennia? In this book, they provide their response to it, what they characterize as "a collaborative, strategic approach to management that acknowledges and leverages the growing interdependence of human resources (HR), corporate real estate (CRE), and information technology (IT), a process we call collaborative strategic management." In this volume, they explain to define, develop, and then implement the CSM process, and thus achieve corporate agility. The co-authors organize and present their material within ten chapters and draw upon a collection of wide-ranging, cutting-edge ideas drawn from pilot programs, case studies, and evolving best practices established by members of the Future of Work community. (The co-authors invite you to visit www.thefutureofwork.net/index.html.)

FYI, the quoted phrase in this review's title was formulated by James O'Toole while identifying major barriers to leading change in a book that bears that name. Grantham, Ware, and Williamson have no illusions whatsoever as to the difficulty of defining, developing, and then implementing the CSM process to achieve corporate agility. They realize that many organizations cannot overcome "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom" and will not survive. These are the "dinosaurs" to which they refer. However, other organizations can become agile and thus adapt to rapid, model-shattering changes in the global economy. These are the "jaguars" to which they refer.

To me, it is especially appropriate that the process of defining, developing, and then implementing collaborative strategic management requires organizations to be actively involved in all manner of alliances and mutually beneficial partnerships between and among members of global communities such as Future of Work. This is precisely what Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney also have in mind in Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World. They wholeheartedly agree with Grantham, Ware, and Williamson that agility is more, much more than a highly desirable attribute; it is, in fact, a key to organizational survival. Hence the importance of this brilliant book that will be of incalculable value to those planning for or have already embarked upon the perilous and complicated but necessary process of strategically integrating the effective management of real estate, human resources, and technology assets.

And as Charles Grantham, James Ware, and Cory Williamson point out, "It does that in a collaborative fashion that requires a change in decision-making processes and styles from what most organizations rely on today. [Moreover, an agile enterprise organizes itself into three (and only three) levels that center on completion, survival, and renewal." In this context, I assume that "completion" refers to achieving the given objectives, whatever they may be. However, collaborative strategic management is a journey rather than a destination, an on-going process that must be constantly renewed with appropriate modifications. Only then can an organization sustain its agility.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat and Competing in a Flat World co-authored by Victor Fung, William Fung, and Yoram (Jerry) Wind as well as The New American Workplace co-authored by James O'Toole and Edward Lawler, O'Toole's aforementioned Leading Change, Henry Chesbrough's Open Business Models, Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis' Judgment, Richard Ogle's Smart World, Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect, James Kilts's Doing What Matters, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, and Enterprise Architecture As Strategy co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Teams make better decisions than individuals, February 12, 2009

By 

Rebecca Clement "Publisher, Soundview Executi... (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World (Hardcover)

Since before the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, there has always been a cantankerous relationship between labor and management. However, just as that single piece of legislation changed the nation's approach to labor relations another more recent landmark work may prove equally important. This undertaking is called the Future of Work and it was a research project that was started in 2002, comprising a small collective of thought leaders from leading corporations such as Intel, Capital One and Agilent Technologies. The purpose of this group was to capture quantifiable and qualitative insights from management and labor regarding the impact of technology; globalization and other emerging trends on the workforce en masse. Charles Grantham chronicles the findings of the Future of Work research project in the book Corporate Agility. Based on the fascinating case studies from both poles of the labor debate, Soundview recommends this book. The author effectively weaves research results, anecdotes, first-hand accounts and case studies into a well-rounded look at where the workplace is moving toward, as well as how it maintains the dignity of workers without sacrificing profitability or sustainability. That's a tall order to fill, but Grantham delivers in Corporate Agility.