The Power of Strategy Innovation: A New Way of Linking Creativity and Strategic Planning to Discover Great Business Opportunities

by Robert E. Johnston, J. Douglas Bate, Robert E. Johnston Jr.

Book Overview

This helpful resource contains tools and tricks to help companies excel in dynamic markets and provide groundbreaking products and services.

The authors refer to this as "innovation" rather than "strategic planning," but the truth is somewhere in-between: through a proven five-phase discovery process --for staging, aligning, exploring, creating, and mapping--strategic innovation will become a company-wide competency.

In...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814433650
• ISBN13: 9780814433652
• Release Date: March 2013
• Publisher: Amacom
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Book should come with a warning label - "Has been known to cause Insomnia"

I am an executive in a business planning and strategy function. I have read many books on the subject of Innovation. This book was unique to me with the focus on strategy innovation and the well defined methodology described to work through the process. Believe me, it caused several nights of insomnia as I couldn't help thinking about ways I could use this information on different problems I was trying to solve. In addition, I found the authors highly responsive as I followed up with them to explore potential opportunities to collaborate. These guys know their stuff! I have recommended this book to others in my company who were looking to develop new product strategies. I think this is a must read for people who are serious about customer and market focused strategy execution.

Both Pragmatic and Actionable...

One of the challenges I have faced with much of the innovation literature is that it is written exclusively from the historical "case study" perspective. Hindsight is easy, foresight is difficult, and finding effective generalizations applicable beyond the narrow retrospective of an author's case studies is nearly impossible. Johnston and Bate have succeeded in achieving this nearly impossible task. These authors take a different perspective (from other innovation authors) and offer a framework for Strategy Innovation - which not to be confused with Strategic Planning. Strategic Planning focuses on building value in current markets through an analytical analysis of the current business conditions and models. Strategy Innovation, by contrast, is defined as creating new value through a creative - insights-driven - iterative approach, where companies leap ahead to define where they want to be and then "work backwards" in order to achieve the future goal. The strengths of this book are three-fold. 1. The book is more than a retrospective case study - it is about developing the process of how to go about incorporating innovation. 2. The Strategy Innovation process described by the authors can be implemented without first requiring radical disruption of the organization or its processes - thus reducing the initial cost and organizational resistance to implementation. For example, Strategic Planning remains - but it should be guided by the Strategic Innovation process. 3. The book is well-written and well-edited.

An innovative approach to strategy

For those of us who are familiar with the more traditional approach to strategic planning, beginning with vision, mission, goals & objectives, strategies and tactics, this book presents a novel approach to strategy. What I particularly liked is how Johnston and Bate use creativity and innovation as a key element in their process to increase the chance of getting breakthrough results rather than incremental improvements.While more "out of the box" techniques are used, it by no means lacks structure in the process. At the end of each planning phase, process tips provide a summary of the key points. The book also includes a number of case studies that grounds the process to real industry examples. If you are interested in understanding how making the future clear will make the present even clearer, read this book.