Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age

Mapping Innovation is an excellent book for business leaders with long term vision and strategic responsibility. Highly recommended and enjoyable read for CEOs and entire leadership teams, including the Board. Mapping Innovation is both a deep scholarly study of innovation and a practical actionable guide to the sustainable process of innovation delivered in a very readable and enjoyable storytelling style.The book begins with in-depth stories of several big and disruptive innovations that transformed life as we know it. Satell guides us along these historically important and fascinating innovation journeys from the seed of the idea, through the identifiable innovative moment, and through the often long process to commercial success.Satell provides a simple and direct definition of Innovation as problems and opportunities seeking solutions. The book teaches Innovation as a multi-faceted discipline and repeatable process. He shows through examples of innovation leading companies that getting to solutions requires a continuum of strategies, styles, and activities that differ by the types of problems and the culture of the company solving them.The core of the book is the Mapping of Innovation strategies and styles by innovation leaders across diverse industries including IBM, Google, Apple, P&G, GE, Glaxo Smith Kline, MD Anderson Institute for Applied Cancer Science, Elsevier and Experian. Satell provides us with an elegantly simple and clear framework to understand and drive innovation – to define the problems, the reason why we innovate, and identify the appropriate strategies most likely to resolve them.The study becomes actionable as Satell maps Innovations at IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Experian, and, Alphabet (Google) on the Innovation Matrix to illuminate the choices and steps of the Innovation Journey. Mapping innovation provides a framework to map innovation at any company, large and small.Satell’s “Innovation Matrix” and his “Horizons of innovation” frameworks are powerful yet simple tools to understand the continuum of innovation, activities, time horizons and resource allocation. Satell”s Innovation frameworks are as useful as Porter’s Five Forces and Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to Entrepreneurs, business students, and corporate leaders.Great read with useful tools!

I bought this book because the Innovation Matrix the author uses, which he first introduced in a short article in HBR (I should have been tipped off right there) was the first one I'd seen that integrates the four types of innovation he focuses on into a single model. It was a mistake. This is a bad book. There is no real conceptual underpinning, no thesis, no real insight. It is merely anecdotal. The two dimensions of the matrix -- the problem definition and the domain definition -- are never defined in the book in sufficient depth to make the matrix meaningful. The author's lack of formal training in economics and strategy is evident throughout, no matter how many trendy buzzwords he bandies about. Having finished the book, I still do not know what the author believes a domain is or how his readers are supposed to think about a domain as we assemble a diversified innovation portfolio. Don't waste your time and money.

Finally! There’s a book about innovation that I can recommend to other people without reservation. It’s Greg Satell’s Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating in a Disrupting Age. That’s a pretty strong statement, so let me elaborate.Back in the 1990s, a major oil company engaged me as part of a team to develop a course on innovation and creativity. As a part of that project, I took a deep dive into the research on both of those terms, as well as most of the business literature. The research was often insightful, but most of the business books got it wrong.Many books treated innovation and creativity as the same thing. They’re not. Creativity is generating new ideas. Innovation is combining and modifying ideas to come up with ways to do things better. There’s more in my post, “A Creativity and Innovation Catechism.”Others perpetuated the intertwined myths of the lone genius and single flashes of inspiration. Still others offered their “secrets” of innovation. According to them, if you took these four steps, or had these three beliefs, or chanted these special words on a night when the moon was full, there would be innovation, and everyone would be happy. Other books treated innovation as the single thing that would make any business or person successful.I’m just a humble preacher’s boy trying to make his way in the world, but none of that made sense to me when I read the research or looked around in the world. For years, I thought I might write the great book about innovation. Now I don’t have to.My first experience of Greg Satell’s writing was his blog, Digital Tonto. His blog posts always seemed to be well-researched and superbly written. That’s true of the book, too. Here’s a look at how the book is structured.Early in the book, Satell lays out the three purposes of his book. Here they are, in his words.“The purpose of this book is threefold. First, it will help you get a better understanding of innovation by dispelling destructive innovation myths. Innovations don’t happen just because someone comes up with one big idea. It takes many ideas to solve an important problem, and that requires a collective effort.Second, this book will give you valuable tools to help you frame the problems that are important to you. As you will see, it is only by framing problems effectively that you can find the approach most likely to solve them. Finally, it will help explain how innovation in the digital age is different from what it was in previous generations. Simply put, technology has given us powerful new tools, and we need to learn how to use them effectively.”Part one is about how innovation really happens. The two chapter titles tell you what he covers. “Innovation Is Never a Single Event” and “Innovation Is Combination.” This is the myth-busting section, where Satell sets up the various common misunderstandings about innovation so that he can knock them down with both reasoning and historical examples. In addition to the lessons about innovation, you’ll learn lots about famous innovators, such as Albert Einstein, and why they were as productive as they were. Expect some surprises.Part two is “Mapping the Innovation Space.” This is the core of the book, and there is an amazing amount of interesting, insightful, and helpful material here. This is where you’ll find the Innovation Matrix that classifies different kinds of innovation based on how well the problem and domain are defined. That matrix results in definitions and descriptions of four kinds of innovation: Basic Research; Breakthrough Innovation; Sustaining Innovation; and, Disruptive Innovation.You’ll pick up the basic point that depending on only one kind of innovation in your company is probably a bad idea. But one of the real strengths of this book is that each of the definitions and descriptions ties the book to practical applications and other models. You not only learn what different kinds of innovation are and how they have and can be applied, you’re also introduced to helpful tools to help make it happen. An example is the description of the Lean Launchpad in the section on Disruptive Innovation.The third part of the book is “Innovation for The Digital Age.” Satell takes a good look at what’s changing and what that means for innovation and innovation strategies. You may not agree with all his reasoning or conclusions here, but, like the rest of the book, they are well-researched, thoughtful, and clearly expressed.In a NutshellThis is the best book I’ve read on innovation in business. Greg Satell does a first-rate job of covering basic ground about innovation and innovation myths. Then he does two things that add special value and make the book unique. The Innovation Matrix gives you a quick way to sort out what kind of situation you’re facing, then the book describes tools and activities to use with different challenges. You’ll read about familiar tools, where they fit, and how to use them to great effect. Satell wraps up Mapping Innovation with a reasoned and insightful sketch of how he thinks innovation will change in the years ahead.

Provides genuine insight into how innovation is evolving, juxtaposed with classical and contemporary real world innovation case studies. A real page turner. This book has inspired a new career direction for me.

Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age (Satell, Greg)- Seu destaque ou posição 212-214 | Adicionado: sexta-feira, 23 de junho de 2017 17:07:24Which path should you pursue? Fortunately, there is an answer, and it starts with asking the right questions to define the problems you seek to solve and map the innovation space. From there, it is mostly a matter of choosing the right tools for the right jobs to develop an innovation playbook that will lead to success in the marketplace.Today, just about every industry you can imagine has been shaped by Bush’s vision. Smartphones, as noted above, are largely built on federally funded technologies, and so are other products of information technology. Most of the blockbuster drugs developed over the last half century stem from research funded by the NIH. Google itself began as an NSF funded project. So while few of us spend much time thinking about fundamental research, it is absolutely essential to the innovation process.Clearly, it takes more than a single big idea to change the world. As Scott Berkun has put it, “Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it’s many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world.”If we want to innovate effectively, we need to look beyond linear sequences of events and take a broader view. Rather than striving to dream things up out of thin air, we need to look around us to see what we can combine to create novel solutions to important problems. If a problem is difficult enough, it needs to borrow from multiple fields of expertise. Innovation, more than anything else, is combination. So when anybody offers us the “one true path” to innovation, we should always be suspicious. Innovation is, quite clearly, not a path but an ecosystem.One of Einstein’s greatest strengths as a scientist was that he was able to discard accepted paradigms when they got in the way of solving a problem.new paradigms don’t emerge whole, but first arrive as a series of quirky anomalies that are easy to dismiss as “special cases” that we can work around. This usually works pretty well for a while, and things go on much as before.A final barrier to shifting paradigms is that change incurs real costs. How much time, effort, and resources do we want to expend on a hunch?If a problem is difficult enough, it needs to borrow from multiple fields of expertise. To break free of an existing paradigm, we need to search beyond the realm in which it was established. Innovation, more than anything else, is combination, which is why if we are to create anything truly important, we need to travel down multiple paths. Yet that doesn’t mean innovation is a random pursuit. We need a clear sense of where we’re going and some concrete ideas on how to get there. To do that, we need to map innovation.As Nobel laureate George Smoot put it, “If we only did applied research, we would still be making better spears,”In my conversations with scientists and executives engaged in basic research, there was one thing I heard over and over again: to gain access to top-quality research, you have to be seen as a participant rather than just an observer. Firms that are successful in this area publish openly, attend scientific conferences, and actively contribute to the expansion of knowledge, whether through their own internal research or by in-kind support, such as offering the use of their facilities or data to cash-strapped scientists.As Woody Allen put it, “80 percent of success is just showing up.”To innovate effectively, you have to choose the right tool for the right job. That’s the essence of building a successful innovation strategy. Instead of thinking about innovation as a search for the “one best way,” we need to start thinking about it as building a portfolio of solutions aimed at solving the specific portfolio of challenges that a particular organization faces.A minimum viable product is not a prototype. As Eric Ries writes, “Unlike a prototype or a concept test, an MVP is designed not to just answer product design or technical questions. Its goal is to test fundamental business hypotheses.”As noted above, at first you are just trying to find customers. Not just any customers, but as Steve Blank put it, visionary customers. These are the early adopters who are adventurous enough—or desperate enough—to take a flyer on a new and unproven product. As you scale your business, you’ll find that the customers in the larger market have very different needs.Every initial vision is wrong. There is always some element of the business model that doesn’t match reality. Whether it is the type of customer, the initial choice of partners, the distribution channel, or something else, as your business grows from the initial group of early adopters you will find that you have to change something significant to build a sustainable business model.Clearly, Bingham and his colleagues had hit on a powerful model. As we discussed in Chapter 3, well-defined problems often go unsolved because the relevant field is missing one small but crucial piece of information. Through applying an open innovation approach, it’s possible to cast a net so wide that it literally covers the entire world. With enough eyeballs, all bugs do indeed become shallow!Still, as Chris Thoen pointed out, it was an enormous cultural change to make this possible. It’s not easy to admit that you can’t solve every problem within your organization, but besides the pride of its internal scientists, there were also legal, organizational, and competitive issues to be considered. All of these had to be overcome before Connect & Develop could be made successful.This was primarily a crisis of business model, rather than business process.So IBM has to innovate on three horizons. First, it must create solutions so powerful that it can create enough value to replace the revenues it is losing from hardware sales. Second, it must learn how to apply those solutions to adjacent areas. Third, it must come up with completely new computing architectures that can drive technological advancement beyond Moore’s Law.In a nutshell, Porter suggested that to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, businesses needed to minimize threats of substitutes and new entrants, while at the same time maximize bargaining power with buyers and suppliers. That, combined with a highly efficient value chain, would make for an unbeatable proposition. This is sometimes called the “positioning school” of strategy because it held that by making the right strategic moves, firms could build an unassailable strategic position.So clearly, we need to give up the illusion of control and learn to use platforms in order to access ecosystems of talent, technology, and information. In a world connected by digital technology, power no longer resides at the top of value chains, but at the center of networks, and the best way to become a dominant player is to become an indispensable partner.When I asked him what he thought accounted for IBM Research’s remarkable track record as an organization, he told me. “We mercilessly squash the Ivory Tower syndrome that had led to the demise of other labs, as thinking of oneself as inherently the better of your peers in development, for example, leads to nothing ever making it out of the labs into the real world.That is the promise of this new era of innovation. As barriers such as time and space—and increasingly ones related to language, culture, and occupational field—fall away, solving really tough problems is increasingly a matter of organizational and platform design rather than skill or cognitive ability. This is an important point to consider, as the challenges ahead will be more difficult and complex than anything mankind has faced before.Gordon sees even darker days ahead. In fact, he sees four primary headwinds, including income inequality, education, demographics, and government debt, that will depress productivity growth for decades to come.We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.Clearly, simple slogans like “innovate or die” are not enough. Everybody wants to innovate, and many think they can, but the number of organizations that are able to do it consistently, year after year and decade after decade, is exceedingly small. We need to start treating innovation as seriously as we do other organizational disciplines, such as finance, accounting, marketing, manufacturing, or logistics.Six Principles to Develop Your Own Innovation Playbook1. Actively Seek Out Good Problemsinnovations are “novel solutions to important problems.” Important to whom? Well, that depends on who you are trying to serve. Businesses solve problems for their customers. Nonprofits focus on problems of particular communities. Scientists solve problems that other scientists believe are important.2. Choose Problems That Suit Your Organization’s Capabilities, Culture, and Strategy3. Ask the Right Questions to Map the Innovation SpaceAs a matter of fact, show me any successful innovator, and I can show you another that is just as successful that does things very differently. Once again, there’s no “silver bullet” for innovation. You have to start by defining problems, not preordaining solutions. That’s why if you remember one thing from this book, it should be these two questions: 1. How well is the problem defined? 2. How well is the domain defined?So the key to innovating effectively is not the objective merits of any particular strategy, but whether that strategy addresses the problem you are trying to solve.4. Leverage Platforms to Access Ecosystems of Talent, Technology, and InformationIn Michael Porter’s model, strategy is very much like a game of chess. He advised managers to drive efficiency by optimizing their firm’s value chain, taking measures to minimize threats from new market entrants and substitute goods, and at the same time working to maximize their bargaining power with buyers and suppliers. By developing the right sequence of strategic moves, enterprises could position themselves to exert power and dominate their respective industries. Clearly, much has changed since Porter formulated his theory of competitive advantage more than 35 years ago. Today, we live in a networked world, and competitive advantage is no longer the sum of all efficiencies, but the sum of all connections. Strategy, and by extension innovation, must focus on widening and deepening connections to talent, technology, and information.We now need to design our organizations for agility, empathy, and interconnectedness, rather than for scale, dominance, and efficiency.5. Build a Collaborative CultureTo innovate these days, you not only need smart, creative people, but also empathetic ones who can listen, build relationships, and form mutual bonds of understanding. One brilliant but abrasive team member can poison the culture and bring collaboration to a screeching halt.6. Understand That Innovation Is a Messy BusinessWe glamourize the 1 percent inspiration but forget about the 99 percent perspiration. After all, perspiration stinks. Many famous innovators failed horribly. Alexander Fleming published his paper and no one noticed. Yet still, he went back to work at his lab the next day. After Steve Jobs’s failed Lisa project, he was hounded out of the company he helped found. It was more than a decade before he returned to create an even greater success. After IBM turned the computing world on its head with the launch of the PC, it soon found itself in near bankruptcy, but rose once again to become a giant in technology services. That’s why so few companies can innovate well. It is such hard, heartbreaking work.

Este livro nos proporciona um panorama geral da inovação. Satell se baseia em uma matriz 2x2 com a definição do problema (bem definido x mal definido) num eixo e a definição do domínio no outro eixo (bem definido x mal definido). Assim, os quatro quadrantes da matriz são preenchidos com quatro tios de inovação: breakthrough; basic research; sustaining innovation; disruptive innovation.Ele utiliza dessa matriz para analisar empresas como Microsoft, IBM, Experian e Google. essas análises são ao mesmo tempo interessantes e bem gerais. O livro inteiro segue esta abordagem com o intuito de proporcionar um panorama geral dos tipos e sistemas de inovação.Uma lição importante aqui é sobre como as inovações são esforços conjuntos e mais demorados do que as pessoas geralmente fazem parecer. Satell faz uma narração da história da descoberta da penicilina que deixa este ponto bem claro.Além disso, a obra traz perspectivas interessantes sobre a utilização de sistemas abertos para melhorar as capacidades de inovação que vão desde a mão de obra ao uso de ferramentas para inovar.No geral a obra agrada, traz menos novidades e granularidade do que eu esperava, mas não decepciona. Achei também que a ênfase em grandes sistemas de inovação orquestrados pelas gigantes foi maior do que deveria ter sido, ou seja, faltou atenção ao que os pequenos estão conseguindo conquistar com toda a abertura e facilidades que a abertura da internet nos trouxe.

I've known Greg's work for over five years now, through his superb Digital Tonto blog series. When he announced he was writing a book, I pre-ordered it the moment it was available.When it finally arrived May 19, I devoured it over our Canadian long weekend. I had high expectations, this book exceeded them in almost every way.Painting a broad historical context, putting to rest the myth of the "lone genius", instead giving us the building blocks of multiple efforts that converge over decades to culminate in a breakthrough event, Greg keeps us entertained, engrossed and enlightened.I have dozens of books that explore and explain "innovation" from every possible angle, yet Mapping Innovation still expanded my conceptual knowledge, and gave me improved methodologies that will prove to be invaluable for my own efforts in creating innovative value for business and society.What gives this book further credibility, Greg is not another academic drawing from the historical records, or consulting gigs, he walked the walk from his days with the Ukrainian digital magazine, Afisha. Combined with his own decade long focus on value creation in the digital age, this makes for a very well rounded, impact filled book.Whether you are at the beginning of your journey in innovative development, or a seasoned veteran looking for more of an edge, an entrepreneur, or charged with your company's program to innovate, Mapping Innovation has to be part of your knowledge arsenal.

Toca algunos puntos interesantes y básicos . Es un buen titulo para empezar a estudiar o entender la innovación desde una óptica de emprendedor. Sin embargo , siento que caerse de base teórica y objetividad , no es un título que recomiendo para académicos