Description
Writing for managers who are responsible for profit growth through innovation, Terwiesch and Ulrich (operations and information management, entrepreneurship, e-commerce, and mechanical engineering, Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania) address the question of how innovators recognize profit-making opportunities when they are still in the beginning stages and provide a model for generating and selecting innovation opportunities in any industry. These filtering processes, or "innovation tournaments," pit opportunities against each other, filter out the weak ones, and identify the ones with the highest profit potential. Examples from Merck, Apple, the Harry Potter movies, Oral B, and Pixar Studios illustrate their model. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Managers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists all seek to maximize the financial returns from innovation, and profits are driven largely by the quality of the opportunities they pursue. Based on a structured and process-driven approach this book demonstrates how to systematically identify exceptional opportunities for innovation.An innovation tournament, just like its counterpart in sports, starts with a large number of candidates, with opportunities as the players. These opportunities are pitted against each other until only the exceptional survive.This book provides a principled approach for the effective management of innovation tournaments - identifying a wealth of promising opportunities and then evaluating and filtering them intelligently for greatest profitability. With a set of practical tools for creating and identifying new opportunities, it guides the reader in evaluating and screening opportunities. The book demonstrates how to construct an innovation portfolio and how to align the innovation process with an organization's competitive strategy.Innovation Tournaments employs quirky, fresh examples ranging from movies to medical devices. The authors' tool kit is built on their extensive research, their entrepreneurial backgrounds, and their teaching and consulting work with many highly innovative organizations.
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