Latest Thinking
Fast Innovation
How Innovation Grapevine Uses Web 2.0 to Spur Creative Business Solutions
Talent Management, April 1, 2008
This article discusses how Accenture uses Web 2.0 and rich internet applications to take an idea from its early concept to execution readiness using mass collaboration between a large number of employees, business partners or customers.
Building a Better Innovation Model, Chief Executive
By Jennifer Pellet, Chief Executive, Issued March 2008
At a Roundtable Discussion sponsored by Accenture and Chief Executive Magazine, leaders focused on the importance of creating and improving upon the Innovation Areas within organizations. Among attendance were James Works, managing partner of Accenture’s George Group, Dan Chow, managing partner of the Fast Innovation Practice of Accenture’s George Group, Leigh Abrams, CEO and director of Drew Industries, Paul Camti, president and CEO of Siemens Corporate Research, Kathy Paladino, president of enterprise mobility business at Motorola, Tom Quindlen, president and CEO of GE Commercial Finance Corporate Lending, Richard Vie, chairman, president and CEO of Unitrin, as well as many others.
Accenture Innovation Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing, Wall Street Journal
By George Anders, Wall Street Journal, Page B3, June 11, 2007
Reducing the number of innovation projects can speed the introduction of new product lines. Special focus on Avery Dennison.
Strategic Research Architecture: Aligning Consumer Research and Strategy to Support Effective and Sustained Innovation
A whitepaper from George Group's Fast Innovation team.
Sustaining innovation success over time demands market insights not just for incremental product improvement efforts, but also for strategic decision-making. Many companies systematically overinvest in understanding their current consumers in their current market and underinvest in the longer-term research that uncovers viable new market opportunities, implicitly exposing their business to strategic risk. The authors argue that by creating a Strategic Research Architecture (SRA) that aligns and integrates strategic and consumer research activities, organizations can balance research efforts across near and long-term time horizons, dramatically enhancing their chances of sustaining competitive differentiation.
To view the special report, click here.
'Smart Growth': Innovating to Meet the Needs of the Market Without Feeding the Beast of Complexity
The 2nd in a series of special reports from George Group and Knowledge @ Wharton.
As companies struggle to innovate in today’s competitive environment, they need to continually guard against adding to their “clutter” — the creeping impact of complexity on efficiency and cost-competitiveness. In this three-part special report, experts from Wharton and George Group Consulting discuss how management can approach this problem by thinking “ambidextrously” — that is, focusing on innovation and broad exploration while minimizing the impact of clutter on operational processes and costs.
To view the special report, click here.
Also, in the accompanying podcast (with transcript), Mike McCallister, CEO of Humana, discusses balancing innovation and complexity in the health care industry with Wharton management professor Michael Useem and Stephen Wilson, engagement director in George Group's Conquering Complexity practice.
To directly download the podcast, click here.
To view a transcript of the podcast, click here.
Fast Innovation Book
The following pieces are excerpts from the book Fast Innovation by Michael L. George, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill (McGraw-Hill 2005):
Foreword by Clayton Christensen
"I first met Mike George at a Fortune Innovation Conference in New York City in December 2004. As he challenged a number of my assertions, it was clear that he possessed an extraordinary understanding of the history of technological change. I subsequently took the opportunity to test my theory of disruptive innovations against his historical examples which appeared to extend the applicability of the theory..."
Preface, Fast Innovation
By Michael L. George, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill
"This book is for CEOs and managers who want to know: why it takes so long for innovations to reach the market and why they so often fail; how to reduce time-to-market and increase the success rate of innovations; the secrets to creating truly great innovations; how to balance the need for speed with the need for genuine differentiation."
The Three Innovation Imperatives: Differentiated, Fast, Disruptive
By Michael L. George, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill
"The value proposition is captured in our definition of Fast Innovation: The process of creating new products, services, processes, business models and markets with sufficient differentiation and speed such that the company maintains above-average shareholder returns for decades. This chapter looks at the three imperatives incorporated into that definition: Differentiation, Fast Time-to-Market, and Disruptive Innovations."
Customers and Differentiation: Understanding the Heart of the Customer
By Michael L. George, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill
"The economic stakes in creating products and services that can command premiums in the marketplace were spelled out in Figure 2-02, which showed that highly differentiated offerings (from the customers' perspective) had an 82% success rate and increased market share by 54%. Those offerings that were moderately advantaged succeeded 58% of the time but only increased market share by 34%. Offerings perceived as me-too succeeded 18% of the time but increased market share by only 12%."
How to Become Fast
By Michael L. George, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill
"Fast Innovation consists of strategies that either contribute to speeding up the innovation process from initial insight to delivery and/or to significantly increasing the level of differentiation. The "fast" aspect comes from two prerequisites for sustained growth in revenue and value you'll need to pursue simultaneously: 1) Attacking the causes of long innovation lead time and 2) Rapid learning and differentiation."
The Strong Advantage of Multidimensional Innovation
By Michael L. George, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill
"We have spoken of the power of each of the three dimensions of innovation--but the whole is almost certainly greater than the sum of the parts. If you can innovate along more than one dimension, it is far less likely that a competitor can respond. It is one thing for a competitor to copy a product or service innovation, another to copy a process innovation that is delivering that product or service faster and cheaper or that is protected by being part of a market definition array of products and services. Each initiative complements the strength of the other. Thus the ability to maintain above-average shareholder returns is greatly enhanced by simultaneous innovation along more than one dimension." |
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