Editor’s letter

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2014), "Editor’s letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 42 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-01-2014-0012

Editor’s letter

Article Type: Editor’s letter From: Strategy & Leadership, Volume 42, Issue 2

This special issue of Strategy & Leadership examines collaborative practices and processes needed in the emerging Creative Economy to achieve continuous innovation and co-creation of value with stakeholders. It addresses several vital challenges facing corporate leadership:

* How to promote continuous and customer-focused innovation of products, services and processes by listening to your stakeholders.

* How to foster corporate vitality by sharing managerial control with stakeholders.

* How to use engagement platforms to constantly reassess and adapt the customer journey.

* How to transfer experiential learning and insight from the stakeholders to operations.

Articles featured in this issue:

Navigating the phase change to the creative economy

Stephen Denning

Today, we are seeing disruptive innovations that create whole new market ecosystems, so-called economic phase changes that produce a complex transformation in human behavior initiated by a new way to satisfy consumption needs. A new approach to managing, leading, following, thinking, speaking and acting in the workplace is outlined for businesses seeking to adapt to these dynamic markets.

Case

Building a culture of co-creation at Mahindra

Venkat Ramaswamy and Naveen Chopra

Starting in 2011, Naveen Chopra, then senior general manager and head of Plant Quality for the Automotive Division of Mahindra, one of India’s largest vehicle manufacturers, applied the co-creation thinking model to the quality function in five operating sites. This case looks at the results as the experiment expanded to other units and functions.

How to plan and manage a project to co-create value with stakeholders

Gaurav Bhalla

Successful companies harness the creativity and energy of stakeholders by establishing projects and systems for marrying their collaborators’ interests with corporate knowledge and resources. Here are some best-practice processes, tools and technologies of leading firms.

Interview

Agile at IBM: software developers teach a new dance step to management

Robert M. Randall

In dynamic marketplaces where products, software and services are increasingly interlinked, the winners are likely to be those firms that have mastered radical management processes that promote swift and continuous innovation such as Agile/Scrum. Rob Purdie, Agile Practice Lead for the IBM Design Lab, explains how it works in practice.

Masterclass

India: MNC strategies for growth and innovation

Brian Leavy

This “Masterclass” examines some unique practices of innovators in India. For more on this subject, see Brian Leavy’s book review of Reimagining India and John Doyle’s column on how India’s economic globalism is influencing its foreign policy, both in this issue.

Innovative ways companies are using design thinking

Jeanne Liedtka

Here’s how design thinking, the process of continuously redesigning a business using insight derived from customer intimacy, is being adapted as a problem solving tool in a variety of industries.

And I also highly recommend Robert Allio’s book review of Strategy: A History and Ken Grossberg’s “Conference report” on social media and CRM cases from leading firms.

Good reading,

Robert M. Randall

Editor