The Smart Organization: Creating Value Through Strategic R&D [Hardcover]

David Matheson (Author), James E. Matheson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1997

Why do some firms continually make poor R&D decisions while others can deliver a stream of successful products and services? According to the Mathesons, successful firms have internalized the nine interlocking principles of smart R&D - the building blocks of a corporate culture that emphasize making the right strategic decisions at the right times, and aligning organizational practices to support these decisions and sustain their results. The nine principles include embracing uncertainty, opening information flows, and encouraging systems thinking. Once in place, these values enable companies to make appropriate choices about their R&D planning, portfolio management, and project strategies. The authors stress the importance of evaluating trade-offs, investigating alternatives, and getting buy-in across functions to ensure that decisions will be viable from both technological and managerial perspectives. They use best practice examples from companies including General Motors, Pilkington Glass, and BankOne of Ohio to demonstrate that the methods used to enrich R&D planning can be applied more broadly to create, in effect, the smart organization.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If more companies were to act like this, there might be less demand for off-the-peg strategies from consultants." -- The Economist, July 11, 1998

From the Back Cover

Over the past eight years, we implemented new decision processes based on the nine principles found in The Smart Organization. The result has been a change in the openness of our decision processes, the evolution of an improved attitude toward learning, and significant value added for GM's shareholders. --Vincent P. Barabba, General Manager, Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development, General Motors Corporation

This major work describes the practices that permit an organization to derive the most benefit from making quality decisions following the fundamental methodology of the Stanford school of decision analysis.' The Mathesons' book draws on more than 30 years' experience in management consulting and research. Their design for the smart organization' should capture the attention of any smart executive leader. --Ronald A. Howard, Professor and Director, Decisions and Ethics Center, Department of Engineering-Economics Systems and Operations Research, Stanford University

Bayer has used the SDG approach for the last six years, and we have found the process extremely useful. The Smart Organization elucidates both process and methodology, using a clear concept and lively examples from real business situations. --Dirk Suwelack, Ph.D., Head of Strategic Planning, Business Group Pharmaceuticals, Bayer AG, Leverkusen, Germany

With sharply drawn examples from Medieval longbows to space shuttle o-rings, the Mathesons' book enables us to carry home vivid pictures of the path to organizational enlightenment. The fundamental principles they outline were the guide to the re- engineering of drug discovery and development at Eli Lilly and Company. --W. Leigh Thompson, Ph.D., M.D., Retired Chief Scientific Officer, Eli Lilly and Company, and CEO, Profound Quality Resources, Ltd.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087584765X
• ISBN-13: 978-0875847658
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #124,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Planning & Forecasting
  • #100 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Research

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book. If you liked the HBR article, you'll love this!, March 31, 1999

By 

T. Noyes (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Smart Organization: Creating Value Through Strategic R&D (Hardcover)

Frequently organizations face the challange of what not to do. They tend to believe in the person presenting the idea, rather then creating a rigorous process for evaluating the options before them. Companies adopting best practices in managing their investment options realize substantial gains in their long term bottem line. This book quantifies this performance difference, and what the best practices are across a range of industries.

Why aren't organizations more rigorous in selecting projects? The book outlines several barriers which are extremely relevent:

· It will make a popular champion look bad,

· Organizational resistance to change, or cannibalization of an existing business for a new opportunity,

· We confuse the urgent with the important,

· Its hard to agree on measures and success criteria

· People are afraid of making the wrong prediction, so they don't make any,

· Its hard to normalize results from different contributors,

· Business plans are not integrated with new project activity,

· Power and politics, a methodical evaluation leaves no room for interpretation and "behind the scenes" trade offs between groups and individuals,

· Lack of strategy.

The best practices outlined in this book are backed by substantial research. I would have like to have seen a few additional chapters on application of best practices in real companies ... a case study of a turn around.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great insights for all concerned with strategy and renewal., July 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Smart Organization: Creating Value Through Strategic R&D (Hardcover)

Focusing on large R&D intensive organizations, this book explores nine key principles that make these enterprises effective, such as: open information flow, systems thinking, and continual learning. The author's emphasize the decision making process as a means of changing and improving overall organizational performance. If you are seeking new insights into how strategy is developed, excellence can be achieved in decision making, and organization renewal can be realized, you will find this book enlightening and fascinating reading. The insights offered here are by no means limited to high-technology firms; they apply to any organization seeking to be successful in today's fast-paced markets. This work includes an organizational IQ test (a diagnostic tool) for identifying root causes of the barriers to improving decision processes. There is an impressive amount of knowledge about organization to be gleaned in The Smart Company. Whether you are a technology -based bus! iness or not, you will find many nuggets in this work. We highly recommend it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-worth the price, even if you read only one chapter!, March 24, 2010

By 

Matt Franklin (Moraga, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Smart Organization: Creating Value Through Strategic R&D (Hardcover)

As an experienced decision analyst, I really enjoyed reading Chapter 10 on R&D Portfolio Strategy. I was already familiar with much of the material in the early chapters, being steeped in the Howard/Stanford/SDG/SDRM school of thought on DA, so I skipped the earlier chapters.

Often times we do careful analyses on individual projects to get them all on a level playing field, but the concepts of this chapter bring together the elements of how to evaluate and prioritize those carefully characterized projects. The R&D Productivity Chart is a simple-but-excellent tool to rank projects. And their low vs. status quo vs. high vs minimal investment level was a nice detail to further refine our projects. I also appreciated the history and philosophy behind the names of the Bread-and-Butter, White Elephant, Oyster, and Pearl project categories. And the concept of developing a Value Creation culture cannot be emphasized enough.

I've always been impressed by SDG's approach to things and this book by SmartOrg in no exception.

Recommendation: Buy it, even if only for Chapter 10.


--Matt Franklin