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24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint
For Surviving and Thriving
in an Age of Change by
Stephen Shapiro is a practical field
guide on how to manage innovation
in the 21st-century organization.
The author focuses on innovation in
its widest sense, including product,
process, structure, relationships and
the development of customer-focused
capabilities throughout the organization. This
excellent book should be required reading for
every corporate leader and entrepreneur.
24/7 Innovation is not just another theoretical
book about innovation. Shapiro explains what
today’s most innovative companies are doing
today to develop a culture of pervasive
innovation. He presents practical, actionable
principles, backed by dozens of real-world
examples, that you can adapt to the needs of
your organization.
How the book is structured 24/7 Innovation
is divided into three main sections:
Part One: Surviving and Thriving in an Age of
Change -- In this opening section, Shapiro makes
the case for innovation, and answers questions
such as: Why is pervasive innovation important?
How can organizations use innovation to create a
sustainable competitive advantage and enhance
their ability to anticipate and meet customer
needs?
One of the key themes of this section of
24/7 Innovation is something that Shapiro calls
“lines, not boxes.” What does this mean?
Typically, most companies focus on
the “boxes,” the functional
elements that make up the
company, while ignoring the
opportunities for innovation that lie
within its relationships -- the “lines”
that connect these operations.
According to Shapiro, lines include
the organization’s relationships
between its employees, teams and departments,
between an organization and its outside partners,
and between the organization and its customers.
This is a simple but powerful metaphor that
drives home the point that an organization’s
innovation efforts ought to be focused primarily
on processes and strategic relationships (lines),
not just the new product pipeline (boxes).
Part Two: The Blueprint, includes sections on
process-enabled innovation, creating a culture of
innovation, customer strategies and the
relationship between technology and innovation.
One of the core concepts of this part of the
book is organizing new capabilities and
improving upon existing ones. Shapiro defines a
capability as something that enables “an
organization to perform optimally in activities
that typically require processes, people and
technology. Capabilities derive from an explicit
strategy, and they deliver measurable results.”
The author strongly recommends that managers
and leaders focus on capabilities that are
customer focused, and emphasizes that this may
be the only source of sustainable competitive
advantage available to companies today.
By Chuck Frey, www.innovationtools.com
Part Three: Making it Happen includes advice
on setting priorities when implementing an
innovation initiative, using simulations to
experiment with new business models prior to
implementing them, and how to implement
innovation in stages or phases for best results.
One of the most valuable tools in this section of
the book is what Shapiro calls the Innovation
Targeting Matrix -- which is designed to help
companies determine those capabilities from
which they gain their competitive advantage.
Conclusion
24/7 Innovation is a remarkable book that
should be on every leader’s and entrepreneur’s
must-read list. It is filled with valuable real-world
insights and advice that you can use to establish
and nurture pervasive innovation as a core
capability of your organization.
Stephen Shapiro draws upon many years of
real-world consulting experience to formulate a
set of powerful guidelines for supporting and
fostering innovation in all its forms. Refreshingly,
he places a particular emphasis on process
innovation, which is still poorly understood by
many executives. His “lines, not boxes”
metaphor is both simple and valuable, and helps
to illuminate the many opportunities for
innovation that exist within the typical
organization.
This thought-provoking book is a must-read
for anyone who is serious about corporate
innovation. It is a valuable how-to manual that
you will find yourself referring back to again and
again to refresh your thinking about innovation.
www.fia.org.fj June, 2012. The FiJi AccounTAnT 23