Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution by Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble

From the Publisher

Building a New Business within a Profitable Old One

Even world-class companies, with powerful and proven business models, eventually discover limits to growth. That's what makes emerging high-growth industries so attractive. Although they lack a proven formula for making a profit, these industries represent huge opportunities for the companies that are fast enough and smart enough.

But constructing tomorrow's businesses while simultaneously sustaining excellence in today's demands a delicate balance. It is a quest fraught with contradiction and paradox. Until now, there has been little practical guidance.

Based on an in-depth, multiyear research study of innovative initiatives at ten large corporations, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble identify three central challenges: forgetting yesterday's successful processes and practices; borrowing selected resources from the core business; and learning how the new business can succeed. The authors make recommendations regarding staffing, leadership roles, reporting relationships, process design, planning, performance assessment, incentives, cultural norms, and much more.

Breakthrough growth opportunities can make or break companies and careers. Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators is every leader's guide to execution in unexplored territory.

Author Bio: Vijay Govindarajan is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Chris Trimble is an adjunct associate professor at Tuck and a senior fellow at Katzenbach Partners, LLC. The authors direct the William F. Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership.

Strategy & Business

Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution is the best book we've seen on the '"how-tos" of creating an innovative new business, and thus the single best strategic book of the year.

Publishers Weekly

By burying their titular 10 rules in a small final chapter, Govindarajan and Trimble commit the first deadly sin of business writing: ambiguity. Before that, readers can be forgiven for believing there are only three fundamental principles for stewarding innovative projects within established companies: forgetting, borrowing and learning. The Fast Company columnists, who cofounded a leadership institute at Dartmouth's business school, argue that most companies do not understand how to foster a genuinely experimental environment. Judging the new company ("NewCo") by the performance standards of the core company ("CoreCo") won't inspire change, hence the need to forget. But NewCo does have to borrow selectively from CoreCo's best resources in order to gain the foothold necessary for success, and it must learn from its experiences rather than stick blindly to its earliest plans. Govindarajan and Trimble use case studies from four industries, including manufacturing and online media. The examples, supplemented by numerous figures that reduce ideas to clear bullet points, get their points across effectively, but some readers may grow impatient waiting for the promised rules to turn up. (Dec. 1) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

In 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators, business professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble describe how companies make mistakes between innovation and execution, and outline what it takes to build a successful new business while maintaining excellence in an existing one. Based on an in-depth study, their book identifies what organizations must know to set aside key assumptions; borrow assets from an established business; and learn how to succeed in an emerging, uncertain market. Copyright © 2006 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents