Customer Reviews

The Innovation Premium: How Next Generation Companies Are Achieving Peak Performance And Profitability

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This book examines how companies become innovation leaders. The authors view first-generation R&D as inadequate; they see innovation as encompassing everything from start to finish, to create new products, services, processes and businesses.

In this enlightening book, a model organization is proposed-the next-generation (NG) company. This is an organization that is collaborative and networked, enabling people to communicate and work together as a team; it is also a knowledge-based learning machine, committed to innovation. NG managers encourage personal interactions and cross-fertilization. The key leadership role is that of the Chief Development Officer who inspires innovation and technology, develops new business, builds strategies, exploits intellectual property, and creates alliances. Many examples are presented to illustrate the NG concept, the framework of which involves strategy, process, resources, organization and learning.

This book presents an excellent macro view of innovative, innovating companies. It is imaginative and provides a compelling vision. Highly recommended. As reviewed by Yvette Borcia and Gerry Stern, editors of Stern's Management Review online, HRconsultant.com, founders, Stern & Associates and the Human Resources Knowledge Network, authors of Stern's SourceFinder: The Master Directory to HR and Business Information and Resources, Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder, and Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder.

Businesses that achieve growth and profitability through innovation have been valued higher on Wall Street and have been rewarded by investors. There is a premium on innovation in the marketplace. However, it is often difficult to know how to capture and foster innovation within the organization. Based on studies of companies that have successfully integrated innovation, the authors present both a framework for capturing innovation and guidance on transforming your organization into a next-generation company, where customers, suppliers and strategic partners are all involved in making the company an innovative leader.

The goal of becoming a next-generation company must be management driven and is based on two principles.
1. Management must drive innovation across the entire enterprise to create value.
2. Management must leverage technology and competency to drive sustainable innovation and capture competitive advantage.

The framework the authors present focuses on five areas:
1. Strategy: Companies must construct technology and competency platforms than can be tapped to generate improvements and innovation. Platforms are sets of key technologies and/or capabilities applied as the basis for growth.
2. Process: Companies must be willing to search for innovative ideas in a wide variety of sources at the beginning. At the end, they must be prepared to market an array of products and services, promoting the commercialization of captured innovations.
3. Innovative resources: Invest in alliances with suppliers who will coordinate efforts to save time and money. Leverage the expertise of your employees to sustain innovation.
4. Innovative organization: Create worldwide networks of innovators. Allow ideas to flow across the organization. Network employees to each other and to partners outside the organization.
5. Innovative learning culture: Learning is the key to sustaining the pace of innovation. Learning must be continuous and company-wide. Companies must gather the expertise from every corner of its enterprise and extend it across the organization.

Innovation Premium is a great resource book on today's emerging need to integrate Creativity and Innovation as vital elements of any business enterprise. Gone are the days of relying on effectiveness and efficiency alone.

As companies around the globe learn to adopt effectiveness and efficiency programs, companies with these advantages will continue to lose those advantages in the future. Only by incorporating an innovative culture in every operation of their companies can they begin to build a new vibrant, dynamic learning organization that can withstand the test of time.

Arthur D Little, Inc.'s research into the relationship between companies which are very innovative like Nokia to their performance in the stock markets are proof enough that investors and financial analysts today give premium to companies who created the right culture on excellence and innovation.