What's the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking [Hardcover]

Thomas H. Davenport (Author), Laurence Prusak (Author), H. James Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2003

The secrets of successful idea practitioners change management. Reengineering. Knowledge management. Major new management ideas are thrown at today's companies with increasing frequency - and each comes with evangelizing gurus and eager-to-assist implementation consultants. Only a handful of these ideas will be a good fit for your organization. Choose the right idea at the right time and your company can become more efficient, more effective, and more innovative. Choose the wrong one - or jump on the right bandwagon too late - and your company could fall hopelessly behind. Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak say that some managers have found ways to improve their odds of success in the risky but essential game of idea management. In "What's the Big Idea?, they introduce a largely unsung class of managers they call - idea practitioners - individuals who do the real work of importing and implementing new ideas into businesses.While gurus reap most of the credit when big ideas take flight, Davenport and Prusak's research reveals that idea practitioners actually play the most important role: they turn the right ideas into action. Drawing from decades of consulting, academic, and business experience and from their novel study of more than 100 of these critical change leaders, "What's the Big Idea?" offers tools and frameworks for: assessing the merits of the top business gurus; scanning and tracking emerging ideas in the marketplace; distinguishing promising ideas from rhetoric; refining ideas to suit your organization's particular needs; packaging and selling the idea internally; and ensuring successful implementation.Davenport and Prusak prove that there are no faddish management ideas - only faddish ways of adopting them. Encouraging managers to embrace the power of ideas while avoiding the hype that often accompanies them, this pragmatic guide shows how passion and reason combine to build innovative companies.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"In engaging language and with many current examples, Davenport and Prusak offer a convincing explanation of how a handful of organizations are able to consistently derive commercial benefit from the good ideas of their own people and others. I consider What’s the Big Idea? to be a must-read, whether you are seeking to market your own ideas or to convert the ideas of others to competitive advantage."
—Steve Kerr, Managing Director and Chief Learning Officer, Goldman Sachs

"In this original and important book, Davenport and Prusak answer their own question: the big idea is how ideas and their creators have shaped the foundations of management practices over the past four or five decades. What’s the Big Idea? thoroughly covers the history and sociology of ideas that have made a huge difference in how business is practiced."
—Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, USC, and coauthor, Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders

"What's the Big Idea? is a brilliant guide to finding and implementing sound business ideas. Davenport and Prusak have uncovered fundamental truths about business knowledge that simply cannot be found elsewhere. This is a timeless and relentlessly useful book. If you want your company to keep getting better every day, buy this charming and well-written book, study it, and keep talking about it with your colleagues."
—Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford, author, Weird Ideas That Work, and coauthor, The Knowing-Doing Gap.

"Davenport and Prusak’s innovative analysis focuses not only on the critical ideas that change the course of business performance, but, more important, on the people and processes that transform ideas into results. In their fascinating description of ‘idea practitioners,’ they will help readers to attain that lofty status."
—Gary W. Loveman, President & CEO, Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.

About the Author

Thomas H. Davenport is the Director of Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change, and has accepted a faculty position at Babson College starting this Fall. Laurence Prusak is the Director of IBM's Institute for Knowledge Management. Jim Wilson is an associate of the Institute for Strategic Change.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578519314
• ISBN-13: 978-1578519316
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,412,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Certain to Become a Business "Classic" June 1, 2003

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Within a few hours of reading this latest book co-authored by Davenport and Prusak with H. James Wilson, I went into a meeting with the senior managers of one of my consulting clients. The only item on the agenda was the perceived need for generating more suggestions from among the company's 575 employees. More specifically, suggestions as to how to produce more and better work in less time and thereby lower operating costs while increasing productivity and improving efficiency. (Sound familiar?) Still absorbing Davenport and Prusak's information and (especially) insights, I posed for the group a series of questions:

1. Is this company idea-driven?

2. Are workers encouraged to suggest new/better ideas?

3. Are they convinced each suggestion will be carefully considered?

4. Are the best ideas then recognized and rewarded?

5. Are those suggestions then acted upon in a timely manner?

Long pause. Silence. The senior managers resembled what Darrell Royal once described as "a young goat staring at a new gate." Clearing of throats. Finally, the CEO asked "Well, what about it?" Finally, those in the group admitted that the answer to all of the was the same: sometimes. Translation: Seldom.

In Working Knowledge (1997), Davenport and Prusak explain how organizations manage what they know. In The Good Company (2001), Cohen and Prusak explain how social capital makes organizations work. In this volume, Davenport and Prusak explain how to create and capitalize on the best management thinking. However, any business idea (no matter how BIG it may seem to some) is essentially worthless unless and until it contributes to business success. In this volume, they focus on "idea practitioners" and "gurus." The former are those within an organization who assess and translate and develop new ideas to bring into the organization and subsequently fight for them. The latter are "boundary spanners" who work with rather than within an organization, sharing what they have learned from their exposure to both theory and practice-oriented ideas as they interact with companies ("the primary source of their ideas"), think and write (analyses for clients as well as articles and books for publication), and present their ideas at meetings and conferences (thereby attracting attention and new clients as well as earning substantial appearance fees). Davenport and Prusak examine the work of several dozen "idea practitioners" and "gurus." In Appendix C, they rank "The Top Two Hundred Business Gurus," with the top five being Michael Porter, Tom Peters, Robert Reich, Peter Drucker, and Gary Becker.

Carefully organizing their material within nine chapters, Davenport and Prusak explain how ideas are linked to business success, who introduces ideas to organizations and how they do that, why "content counts," where the best management ideas come from, how ideas interact with markets, where to find ideas most appropriate to a given organization and then how to sell them, and why idea-based leadership is essential to any organization's success. I've already mentioned Appendix C. The other two, Appendices A and B, provide "A Select Survey of Business and Management Ideas" and "The Idea Practitioners."

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first single volume in which cutting-edge thinking about intellectual capital, social capital, creative business thinking, process simplification/improvement, knowledge management, and idea leadership is not only combined but correlated and indeed integrated into what can be (with certain modifications) a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system for generating the best ideas and then effectively putting them into practice.

At the outset of the review, I presumed to include the five questions posed to the senior managers. After re-reading this book, I am even more convinced that these are questions which decision-makers must ask inorder to determine the extent to which their organization is not only receptive to new and better ideas but wholeheartedly determined to generate or adopt and then implement them. Davenport and Prusak are dead on: There must be an Idea Strategy. More importantly, there must be an Idea-Friendly Culture which has (a) open dialogue between and among ALL levels, (b) what Jack Welch calls "boundarylessness" which maximizes individual and collective intellect from both within and outside the organization, and finally, (c) trust and responsibility which will, Davenport and Prusak assert, "allow people to learn effectively from each other and provide motivation for putting ideas to work."

This book is certain to become a business "classic."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars HOW TO "EXECUTE" ON WHAT WE "KNOW" June 8, 2003

By Shashank Tripathi VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Chances are you feel you've read books like this before. WHAT makes an idea work? WHO in an organization makes it work? WHY are idea practitioners not always rewarded or recognized? IS your organization stifling the flow of ideas or motivating ANYONE to come up with them?

Yet, veering around interviews with 100 or so actual idea practitioners, this offering from Davenport et al has a very specific thematic intent and does a fabulous job of it. Below are some thoughts that form the spine of this brilliant work --

(1) It is usually the same people who advance new business approaches at organizations. It's a whole class of people who have never been exalted to the status of high-profile business gurus (Porter, Tom Peters, Drucker, Hammer etc) despite being the ones to _actualize_ the ambitious ponderings of the Porters and Druckers of our world.

(2) And no, rarities like Jack Welch may be more of an exception than the rule. Most idea practitioners are not on a fast track to the corner office. Most of them believe that they could probably have done better within the company if they had instead focused their careers on power and responsibility.

(3) Yet, many of these people can't help themselves. They tend to gravitate to the jobs that have more intellectual content.

(4) It is the contribution of these folk that gives companies competitive edges in times of an economic slump or industry stagnation/maturation, or even an elevated "perceived" business performance resulting in improved shareholder value and morale.

(5) None of the above is conveyed in the form of fluffy business wisdom tripe. A smattering of examples from around the world support all the authors' theses -- failing K-Mart versus the expanding Walmart, the nearly bygone Westinghouse versus GE, Cemex in Mexico, Holcim in Switzerland etc.

(6) Finally, amidst the profiles of the idea practitioners the authors attempt to offer a framework to evaluate and execute ideas. As for evaluation, they recommend running the idea through the litmus of the CLASSIC THREE of strategy (Efficiency, Effectiveness and Innovation). This does not come off as altogether fresh although the suggested framework is useful. As for execution, we are left more or less with the interviews and the thoughts therein.

Overall, I'd say this is an engrossing book and the actual success stories are inspiring (perhaps a decent springboard for ideas too). The organization of the content could have been a little bit better but you don't have to be a true believer in the power of management ideas to appreciate the value of this book in our management thinking driven times.

An important, interesting read.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read July 10, 2003

By Naomi Moneypenny

Format:Hardcover

A most interesting and delightfully opinionated book is the latest offering from Tom Davenport and Larry Prusack. Easily digested, this book attempts to `out-meta' the competition in the game of management idea mindshare, by giving a framework by which other ideas are evaluated for their applicability to your organization. `He who owns the process wins' is an oft-quoted cliché at ManyWorlds.com and this book makes a good claim for the process. But more seriously, it does introduce some important (dare I say new) thinking into the faddish and/or fatigued of management ideas.

The most critical of those is that of the `idea practitioner' - the role of the unsung heroes in organizations that translate the guru's missives from on high to that of the real-world working business. They are defined as `individuals who use business improvement ideas to bring about change in organizations'. And to help you seek out these people in your company, Davenport and Prusack helpfully profile a number of real idea practitioners across a range of companies such as BP, Clarica, World Bank, BIC and many others. But chances are that if you are attracted to this book, you are probably an idea practitioner yourself, even in latent form.

The idea practitioner is an idea filterer who possesses the key skills of `translation, harmonization and timing' and applies them to new ideas around the organization. It's the skill of knowing when to introduce an idea, to maximize its impact and benefit to the organization.

What's the Big Idea? examines the lifecycles of ideas, internal and external adoption rates as well as describing the categories of gurus. These include academic gurus (think Michael Porter), consultant gurus (think Adrian Slywotzky), practicing manager gurus (think Jack Welch) and journalist gurus (think Tom Stewart). Of course these categories are blurred but the distinction is useful. An interesting step would be to consider what type of guru your company seems most interested in. My guess would be that hard asset companies are likely to be swayed by practicing manager and consultant type gurus, high growth companies by journalist gurus and very large enterprises by academic gurus.

But the problem with being an idea practitioner is while you may be rewarded by a good profile in Davenport's next book, you may not be appreciated for your network and filtering skills by your own organization. Indeed, pursuing your interest in ideas may only be tolerated once you have proved yourself in more operational roles. Even so, such an idea driven route can be career limiting, since in every idea you sell to the organization, there will always be an ounce of personal credibility that has to go with it. But by taking the core of the idea, the `zeitgeist' and perhaps even innovating a little on top of it to make it more acceptable to your organization, you can build on the foundation of initiatives before it.

Which is just as ideas themselves do. In every idea, the authors would argue, there is a kernel of good practice that should be adopted. The problem is that there is often so much emotion wrapped up around a guru, or a leading company or the idea itself is that this kernel is often ignored or dismissed. But gurus themselves are also guilty of this practice. They often battle against each other, dismiss others' ideas or do not give credit to their sources, teams or inspiration. Sounds just like the local management corporate politics wrestled with in 90% of companies, doesn't it? Thus the role of idea practitioner becomes all the more important to the corporation, navigating both the external and internal battlefields.

Overall, a highly recommended read .Additional highlights including a non-partisan ranking of the top 200 business gurus (contrast that with our traffic based rankings on ManyWorlds.com) and an interview with the immensely smart Steve Kerr, previously CLO at GE and now at Goldman Sachs, on how he `idea practitions'.