How to Innovate and Execute Leaders already know that innovation calls for a different set of activities, skills, methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership approaches. And it is well understood that creating a new business and optimizing an already existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges. The real problem for leaders is doing both, simultaneously. How do you meet the performance requirements of the existing business—one that is still thriving—while dramatically reinventing it? How do you envision a change in your current business model before a crisis forces you to abandon it? Innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan expands the leader’s innovation tool kit with a simple and proven method for allocating the organization’s energy, time, and resources—in balanced measure—across what he calls “the three boxes”: • Box 1: The present—Manage the core business at peak profitability • Box 2: The past—Abandon ideas, practices, and attitudes that could inhibit innovation • Box 3: The future—Convert breakthrough ideas into new products and businesses The three-box framework makes leading innovation easier because it gives leaders a simple vocabulary and set of tools for managing and measuring these different sets of behaviors and activities across all levels of the organization. Supported with rich company examples—GE, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hasbro, IBM, United Rentals, and Tata Consultancy Services—and testimonies of leaders who have successfully used this framework, this book solves once and for all the practical dilemma of how to align an organization on the critical but competing demands of innovation.

A new, comprehensive playbook for innovation from the New York Times bestselling author of Reverse Innovation, Vijay Govindarajan In his seminal book The Three-Box Solution, Vijay Govindarajan offered an amazingly simple and highly effective framework for leading innovation: Execute the present core business at peak efficiency (Box 1) Avoid the inhibiting traps of past success (Box 2) Build a future day by day through breakthrough innovations (Box 3) Since the book's publication, companies across the globe have used the three-box framework to great success. Now, along with Manish Tangri, a corporate dealmaker at Intel, Govindarajan goes deeper into the most crucial box of all: creating the future. Together they provide a repeatable process for companies to create new breakthroughs--from ideation through incubation to scaling. Full of worksheets, exercises, tools, and examples, The Three-Box Solution Playbook is the guide you and your team need to drive innovation and growth--and continually revitalize your company.

In their first book, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators, the authors provided a better model for executing disruptive innovation. They laid out a three-part plan for launching high-risk/high-reward innovation efforts: (1) borrow assets from the existing firms, (2) unlearn and unload certain processes and systems that do not serve the new entity, and (3) learn and build all new capabilities and skills. In their study of the Ten Rules in action, Govindarajan and Trimble observed many other kinds of innovation that were less risky but still critical to the company's ongoing success. In case after case, senior executives expected leaders of innovation initiatives to grapple with forces of resistence, namely incentives to keep doing what the company has always done--rather than develop new competence and knowledge. But where to begin? In this book, the authors argue that the most successful everyday innovators break down the process into six manageable steps: 1. Divide the labor 2. Assemble the dedicated team 3. Manage the partnership 4. Formalize the experiment 5. Break down the hypothesis 6. Seek the truth. The Other Side of Innovation codifies this staged approach in a variety of contexts. It delivers a proven step-by-step guide to executing (launching, managing, and measuring) more modest but necessary innovations within large firms without disrupting their bread-and-butter business.

A radical shift in perspective to transform your organization to become more innovative The Design Thinking Playbook is an actionable guide to the future of business. By stepping back and questioning the current mindset, the faults of the status quo stand out in stark relief—and this guide gives you the tools and frameworks you need to kick off a digital transformation. Design Thinking is about approaching things differently with a strong user orientation and fast iterations with multidisciplinary teams to solve wicked problems. It is equally applicable to (re-)design products, services, processes, business models, and ecosystems. It inspires radical innovation as a matter of course, and ignites capabilities beyond mere potential. Unmatched as a source of competitive advantage, Design Thinking is the driving force behind those who will lead industries through transformations and evolutions. This book describes how Design Thinking is applied across a variety of industries, enriched with other proven approaches as well as the necessary tools, and the knowledge to use them effectively. Packed with solutions for common challenges including digital transformation, this practical, highly visual discussion shows you how Design Thinking fits into agile methods within management, innovation, and startups. Explore the digitized future using new design criteria to create real value for the user Foster radical innovation through an inspiring framework for action Gather the right people to build highly-motivated teams Apply Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, Big Data Analytics, and Lean Start-up using new tools and a fresh new perspective Create Minimum Viable Ecosystems (MVEs) for digital processes and services which becomes for example essential in building Blockchain applications Practical frameworks, real-world solutions, and radical innovation wrapped in a whole new outlook give you the power to mindfully lead to new heights. From systems and operations to people, projects, culture, digitalization, and beyond, this invaluable mind shift paves the way for organizations—and individuals—to do great things. When you're ready to give your organization a big step forward, The Design Thinking Playbook is your practical guide to a more innovative future.

Businesses can plateau, stall, OR stagnatewithout the owners or key executives even realizing it. A business might be achieving incremental year-on-year growth and yet still be in a situation of stagnation or stall. Why? Because entrepreneurs and ...

The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.

Business Models for Transforming Customer Relationships What if there were a way to turn occasional, sporadic transactions with customers into long-term, continuous relationships--while simultaneously driving dramatic improvements in operational efficiency? What if you could break your existing trade-offs between superior customer experience and low cost? This is the promise of a connected strategy. New forms of connectivity--involving frequent, low-friction, customized interactions--mean that companies can now anticipate customer needs as they arise, or even before. Simultaneously, enabled by these technologies, companies can create new business models that deliver more value to customers. Connected strategies are win-win: Customers get a dramatically improved experience, while companies boost operational efficiency. In this book, strategy and operations experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch reveal the emergence of connected strategies as a new source of competitive advantage. With in-depth examples from companies operating in industries such as healthcare, financial services, mobility, retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education, Connected Strategy identifies the four pathways--respond-to-desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution--for turning episodic interactions into continuous relationships. The authors show how each pathway creates a competitive advantage, then guide you through the critical decisions for creating and implementing your own connected strategies. Whether you're trying to revitalize strategy in an established company or disrupt an industry as a startup, this book will help you: Reshape your connections with your customers Find new ways to connect with existing suppliers while also activating new sources of capacity Create the right revenue model Make the best technology choices to support your strategy Integrating rich examples, how-to advice, and practical tools in the form of "workshop chapters" throughout, this book is the ultimate resource for creating competitive advantage through connected relationships with your customers and redefined connections in your industry.