Editor’s letter

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2010), "Editor’s letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 38 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl.2010.26138daa.001

Editor’s letter

Article Type: Editor’s letter From: Strategy & Leadership, Volume 38, Issue 4

The theme of this special issue of Strategy & Leadership is “Making innovation the prime directive.” The stellar cast of authors contributing to it are advocating a revolutionary goal – continuous innovation in processes and products to produce customer value. Their clarion call is timely. Even as corporate leaders struggle to surmount the tactical skirmishes resulting from the current recession, they are realizing that the competition to offer customers value is accelerating, so constant innovation has become a survival imperative.

This issue looks at the process of disruptive innovation, identifies new opportunities for innovation, suggests revolutionary management systems to support innovation, charts the geography of innovation, blueprints business model innovation and lays out a framework for a purposeful self-renewing organization.

As one manager says of continuous innovation, “Once you introduce this, it affects everything in the organization – the way you plan, the way you manage, the way you work. Everything is different. It changes the game fundamentally.” Here are some suggestions about how to plan your learning adventure in this issue.

A conversation about innovation. If you need an introduction to the concept of continuous disruptive innovation you should start by reading our surprising conversation with Scott Anthony, president of innovation consultancy Innosight. Anthony maintains that one of the safest and cheapest methodologies for corporate growth is disruptive innovation. In his interview with S&L contributing editors Brian Leavy and John Sterling he predicts, “I think a lot of companies are going to find that the scarcity imposed by today’s tough times enables innovation in ways that they didn’t anticipate.”

Radical management of innovation. A few firms have discovered that there is a revolutionary way of organizing and managing that enables them to achieve continuous enterprise-wide innovation. In “A leader’s guide to radical management of continuous innovation,” Stephen Denning describes a unique management system that focuses the entire organization on the goal of constantly increasing the value it offers to its clients.

New threats and opportunities. Robert J. Allio offers a seasoned veteran’s view of the current business environment – “In this recession’s aftermath, CEOs face unique threats and opportunities.” He identifies a number of emerging meta-changes and reviews how firms in a variety of industries have successfully employed a variety of innovation concepts in response.

Business model redesign. Corporate leaders get advice on when to adapt the business model and how to execute the change from IBM practitioners Edward Giesen, Eric Riddleberger, Richard Christner and Ragna Bell in “When and how to innovate your business model.” They share insights into both the best timing and process based on data from IBM’s Global CEO Study and an analysis of 28 successful business-model innovators.

Enterprise renewal. Futurists Oliver Sparrow and Gill Ringland tackle an ambitious project: “A system for continuous organizational renewal.” They school managers and policy makers on how to constantly adapt their offering and processes in a turbulent business environment.

Geographic advantage. And finally, the question of where to relocate your operations if you strive to be competitively innovative is answered by Accenture’s Tim Cooper, Mark Purdy and Mark Foster in “A portfolio strategy for locating operations in the new multi-polar world.”

Constant innovation of the value proposition is the new survival capability. The metaphor for competition is no longer one hungry bear chasing two corporate CEOs, with the faster one likely to survive. The current landscape is full of bears as far as anyone can see, and they are all hungry and evolving rapidly.

Good reading!

Robert M. RandallEditor