What's the Big Idea: Creating and Capitalizing on the Best Management Thinking

by Steven L. Stapleton, H. James Wilson, Laurence Prusak, et al.

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1578519314
• ISBN13: 9781578519316
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent read

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 woul

A fine guide through fads to value

For anyone who has felt overwhelmed by the barrage of business and management ideas and movements, and at times even skeptical of their individual and cumulative claims, and that is most of us, this is the perfect book. Davenport and Prusak are veterans of the last two decades of management revolutions-they have been in the game long enough to look back at some of the ideas with which they have been associated with critical detachment, and to make some novel and deep sociological observations about how ideas get made, marketed, used, abused, and superceded. However, they are less interested in a blanket judgment on the idea trade than in taking a closer look and identifying what works and who is doing the working. According to D & P, none of the ideas pushed over the past couple of decades is entirely new, and none is without merit. However, none of the ideas is, or ever was, the best solution for each company in every set of circumstances. So much depends on the particular company's situation, and so much of a company's success depends on those inside the corporation-the "idea practitioners"-who select, advocate, refine, and implement the otherwise general and abstract ideas of management gurus. D & P ( & W) have done a great service in refocusing attention and credit from the brand names to the practitioners, without, of course, slighting the great contributions of gurus, like themselves, to the agility and productivity of modern enterprise.

A fine guide through fads to value

For anyone who has felt overwhelmed by the barrage of business and management ideas and movements, and at times even skeptical of their individual and cumulative claims, and that is most of us, this is the perfect book. Davenport and Prusak are veterans of the last two decades of management revolutions-they have been in the game long enough to look back at some of the ideas with which they have been associated with critical detachment, and to make some novel and deep sociological observations about how ideas get made, marketed, used, abused, and superceded. However, they are less interested in a blanket judgment on the idea trade than in taking a closer look and identifying what works and who is doing the working. According to D & P, none of the ideas pushed over the past couple of decades is entirely new, and none is without merit. However, none of the ideas is, or ever was, the best solution for each company in every set of circumstances. So much depends on the particular company's situation, and so much of a company's success depends on those inside the corporation-the "idea practitioners"-who select, advocate, refine, and implement the otherwise general and abstract ideas of management gurus. D & P ( & W) have done a great service in refocusing attention and credit from the brand names to the practitioners, without, of course, slighting the great contributions of gurus, like themselves, to the agility and productivity of the modern enterprise.

Certain to Become a Business "Classic"

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

Ideas at Work

For "idea practitioners" yearning to push their company beyond business as usual, this book is both an inspiration and a practical roadmap. Davenport, Prusak, and Wilson brush aside the bias against business ideas as transitory fads to demonstrate that, even if there is nothing new under the sun, an idea can be a perfect "fit" for a particular organization, in a particular market current, when it is translated into the company's specific language. Managers with the intuition and intelligence to successfully introduce new ideas are the protagonists of the book. One especially interesting chapter outlines the life cycle of an idea within an organization -- from progenitor to pervasiveness -- demonstrating how a good idea, when well-executed, is eventually absorbed into the corporate culture. Ideas, their champions, and their histories enliven this unusual, informative book.