“Beyond Disruption: Innovating and Achieving Growth Without Displacing Industries, Businesses or Jobs,” by W Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
In their new book, the authors of the bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy connect two managerial obsessions: the “fourth industrial revolution” and stakeholder capitalism.
In addition to creative destruction and the use of own theory, which has urged companies to redefine an industry problem and cross industry boundaries to solve it, there is a third option: the “seamless creation” of new markets outside the boundaries of existing industries. Historical examples include sanitary towels or microfinance. These were innovations in which “social good and economic good went hand in hand” without disrupting established industries.
Pursued on a large scale, their ideas could help business owners and governments “by creating new jobs with a small shift in existing ones,” even as automation advances, they argue. It’s a tantalizing view, one that could in theory minimize the backlash that disruptive innovations have triggered throughout history. In practice, some of the methods they propose for making such breakthroughs are less new. “Enablers” for uninterrupted growth include old favorites like resourcefulness and a “‘could’ not ‘should'” mentality. The idea of non-destructive creation it has also been around for some time.
Disruptive innovation is so entrenched that it’s hard to understand why an ambitious entrepreneur with a brilliant idea would walk away from a golden long-term opportunity just because it could have a short-term impact on incumbent industries. Still, Beyond the break is a high-profile contribution to the ongoing debate about how to shift that thinking.
“Walk to Win: A Playbook for Combating Workplace Bullying,” by Megan Carle
Airthe recently released feature film on how Nike revolutionized the basketball market with the Air Jordan shoe, is a hymn to the company and its managers (men). Walk away to win it reads like the antidote.
Megan Carle (pronounced name “Mee-gun” – as she points out, repeated mispronunciation is a microaggression sometimes used by bullies) left the basketball division of Nike in 2016, after being bullied in the workplace in the last stretch of the his long career. Nike, which says it has a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination, is fighting a lawsuit following claims of sexual harassment and discrimination against other women, triggered, Carle says, by her low-key departure.
Carle translated her sense of betrayal after years into her dream job in this “playbook.” “Think of this book as the what, why, where, when, and how of bullying in the workplace, so it doesn’t ruin you, a coworker, a partner, or a company,” she writes.
It’s an invigorating coaching session based on anonymized case studies (including Carle’s), robust advice, and a heavy dose of basketball jargon. The suggested “exercises” at the end of each chapter work well even for non-fans; injunctions to “box out, slam boards, throw some elbows” or to avoid “spraying the infield,” less so. Even so, with bullying repeatedly in the newsthis is a timely pep talk.
“Sparkle: 24 Concepts to Ignite, Unblock, or Supercharge Your Work Life,” by Chris Mettler and Jon Yarian
Think of a book where the chapters are like the songs in a playlist—arranged so readers can reorder them, mark them as favorites, or recommend them to others in any order they like.
“Don’t think of it as a book,” say authors Chris Mettler and Jon Yarian “Think of it as a conversation.”
Although the concepts covered in Spark are related and dependent on each other, the usual linear narrative is not important in this unconventional manual: you go through them in almost any order, letting the ideas bounce around.
The goal is to inspire people to action and productivity, not dictate rules or assume that others share the authors’ views on what should and shouldn’t be done. It’s a guide to inspiring and provoking success and innovation at your own pace.
The 24 topics covered are organized into three main sections. The first section includes concepts you can work on without other people, such as integrity. The second is focused on partnerships and ideas you can work on with someone else. The third is dedicated to concepts shared across entire organizations, such as agile operations.
The final part of the book presents combinations and sequences for the terms examined and how they lend themselves to each other. Curiosity, for example, is the prerequisite for creativity. It is possible to produce action without curiosity, but it is difficult to be creative without a desire for something truly new.
While Spark is far from a step-by-step manual, it’s written in everyday parlance, offers examples people can relate to, and clearly identifies important concepts that drive success among individuals, teams, and entire organizations.
“Building Moonshots: Over 50 Ways to Turn Radical Ideas into Reality,” by Tamara Carleton and William Cockayne
Building a successful business is often a numbers game, whether it’s calculating profit and loss, the amount of financing needed, or the size of the potential market. When it comes to giving advice, around the 50 mark seems like an acceptable number — ask Paul Simon about the thorny topic of leaving your lover.
So it is with the authors of Building moonshots, offering practical insights into extraordinary entrepreneurship. Tamara Carleton and William Cockayne use the fruits of years of teaching business school innovation and startups to offer just over 50 tips for building a high-growth startup.
Their wisdom comes from decades spent around the Silicon Valley cluster at Stanford University and researching the behavior of big companies in their jobs as leadership lecturers. This book focuses on “moonshots”, defined by the authors as those companies that “move humanity forward”. They are the companies whose ambitions are nearly impossible and therefore deliver world-changing innovation. The authors’ advice is based on having had “a place at the fore” in how these companies have achieved these goals.
It’s an easily digestible book, but it’s not designed to be read from cover to cover in one go. Its 352 pages are divided into 54 concise chapters, each outlining one way moonshots succeed, peppered with MBA-style case studies to explain how real companies do it.
Presumably 54 is not an exhaustive list. But a 55th might be that reading books like this is obviously not enough. While it offers a lot of insight into the most successful and long-lasting businesses, these organizations are built on hours of hard work and sheer perseverance.
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