A sweeping but down-to-earth manifesto on the promise and perils of trying new things.
Corporations desperately need to come up with innovations but are going about it in the wrong ways, according to this penetrating business study.
Parker, the CEO of the venture capital firm High Alpha Innovation, decries the “innovation theater” that he sees at many companies in which dedicated teams act busy without generating useful, transformative ideas. In this book, he presents a far-reaching critique of corporate culture, specifically its aversion to upheaval. He argues that companies aim to conduct business with maximum efficiency while avoiding risk; they employ hierarchical “vetocracies” that enable managers to thwart any threat to the status quo. By contrast, Parker says, disruptive innovation requires a firm to pursue uncertain goals and spend money on projects that may not pan out and can’t be justified by short-term metrics. Innovation’s benefits, he asserts, lie in learning of new skills and creating options a company can pursue when radical changes in the economy occur. The rise of artificial intelligence is one such cataclysm, he contends, which will force firms to either innovate or die. The solution to the conundrum, this book says, is for companies to empower mavericks and small teams to innovate without stifling bureaucratic constraints, to embrace the messiness of the process, and to conduct many low-cost investment experiments to find the few that will stick. Because such a path is hard for hidebound businesses to follow, Parker recommends a strategy of seeking out partnerships with nimble startup entrepreneurs, for whom innovation is second nature—the kind his own firm nurtures.
Parker’s primer draws on his own experiences in innovation—starting with a college mold-remediation business, which he promptly ditched—along with colorful historical case studies, including the National Basketball Association’s adoption of a three-point line and the demolition of the Valeo auto-parts company’s supply chain by the Covid-19 pandemic. He grounds his insights in a wealth of far-flung ideas, from economist Ronald Coase’s theory of the corporation as a machine for lowering transaction costs to seeing the Amazonian jungle as a metaphor for the riot of innovation that firms should incubate. Parker’s attack on corporate stodginess is biting and sardonic: “Our team felt like animals in a petting zoo, brought out for show but with limited ability to really do what we knew we could do best,” as he recalls of one innovation-management gig. But he also writes exuberantly about the potential of innovation, exulting that “we are currently living right at that unique moment in the history of the universe when things go crazy and exponential.” His writing strikes a nice balance between pithy aphorism (“Pessimists sound smart. But optimists make money, and they shape the future”) and concrete discussions of practicalities (“Here’s a quick heuristic: If you can build a forecast of first-year financial results for a new business concept with a high degree of confidence, you should likely launch the idea inside of a corporation”). The result is a clear-eyed take on the necessity for change in business, and the careful journey it demands.
A sweeping but down-to-earth manifesto on the promise and perils of trying new things.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781646871544
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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