How to Innovate and Execute

Leaders already know
that innovation calls for a different set of activities, skills,
methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership approaches. And it is well
understood that creating a new business and optimizing an already
existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges. The
real problem for leaders is doing both, simultaneously. How do you meet
the performance requirements of the existing business—one that is still
thriving—while dramatically reinventing it? How do you envision a change
in your current business model before a crisis forces you to abandon
it?

Innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan expands the leader’s
innovation tool kit with a simple and proven method for allocating the
organization’s energy, time, and resources—in balanced measure—across
what he calls “the three boxes”:

• Box 1: The present—Manage the core business at peak profitability
• Box 2: The past—Abandon ideas, practices, and attitudes that could inhibit innovation
• Box 3: The future—Convert breakthrough ideas into new products and businesses

The
three-box framework makes leading innovation easier because it gives
leaders a simple vocabulary and set of tools for managing and measuring
these different sets of behaviors and activities across all levels of
the organization. Supported with rich company examples—GE, Mahindra
& Mahindra, Hasbro, IBM, United Rentals, and Tata Consultancy
Services—and testimonies of leaders who have successfully used this
framework, this book solves once and for all the practical dilemma of
how to align an organization on the critical but competing demands of
innovation.