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
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
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