Below is a selection of blog entries from Rita Gunther McGrath's blog: The Discipline of Strategic Growth.
Let me start off by stating that I have no knock against government - I have a degree in public policy and was a hard-working employee of the City of New York for many years, so I have a lot of sympathy for institutions and the people trying to survive in them. And yet, when I think of the huge deficits we’re running and the problems this is going to create, it does give me the chills.
One reason is that government functions simply do not take into account any notions of efficiency. It isn’t that bureaucrats (well, most of them anyway) are evil, its that their structure of incentives has nothing to do with how efficient they… read more...
The Atlantic Wire writes: Even if nerds kvetch and refuse to buy an iPad, the device may still sell with some big demographics -- casual tech users, the disabled, the elderly and women. Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath makes the case. "The iPad, she argues, "will be explosive less for tech-elites than for 'non users' -- people who might never have been able to take advantage of computers before." She gives a personal example: "An older member of my family was given a computer, took lessons, and worked on a few projects. She would love to be a proficient user -- to exchange news and photos with her family, and to be able to look up newspaper reports. You… read more...
One of my relatives, a UK-based small business owner, has argued for some time that the London Olympics would come to represent a ballooning cost burden for taxpayers and the reality of just what it will take to host the Games sets in. “Add two zeroes to those estimates” he argued when the city won the initial bid.
Well, it sure is starting to look as though the events are going to be a lot more expensive than was originally planned. According to one articleI found on the topic, the costs admitted to so far look something like this:
2005: £2.4 billion later revised upward to £3.3 billion
2007: £9.3 billion, including… read more...
George Colony (CEO of Forrester Research) noted the following on his post-Davos blog:
I always go to Davos with one question to ask all of the luminaries. This year’s question was: “Coming out of the recession, what is your number one priority?” Nearly every leader answered the question in a similar way: “Focus on growth.” As one executive said: “My organization has been hunkered down for two years—now is the time to get moving again.” I think that’s about as bullish a signal as I could have imagined coming out of Davos.
Can’t come fast enough as far as I’m concerned!
read more...The Nasscom Emerge blog cites "Ian MacMillan and Rita McGrath (both taught at a Spring 08 Columbia Business School program I attended) in an HBR article say 'Most profitable strategies are built on differentiation: offering customers something they value that competitors don't have.' And Harsh Mariwala, Chairman & MD, Marico Ltd says, ' innovation is the fountainhead for differentiation.' The importance of innovation in business is clear. However, to most companies and managers, it is not clear where such innovation might come from. If you turn to management guru Tom Peters, his answer is 'The #1 source of innovation is pissed-off people.' These are people that are annoyed with the status quo. They want something different and much better. How… read more...
At the Total Executive blog, the author cites the 2006 Sloan Management Review article Extracting Value from Corporate Venturing authored by Rita Gunther McGrath, Thomas Keil and Taina Tukiainen: "Executives wax and wane in their enthusiasm for launching new ventures outside an organization's core business. In their more enthusiastic moments, leaders often see corporate venturing initiatives as sources of organic growth and vitally important engines of renewal. However, in their more disenchanted periods executives may see new ventures as high-risk, foolhardy distractions from effectively running the core business. What's more, such pessimism isn't wrong. Corporate ventures are risky and they usually do not produce hoped-for results." To read the entire blog, read more...
At The Accidental Product Manager blog, Dr. Jim Anderson views discovery-driven growth to be "product flop insurance."
"Dr. McGrath proposes that we start to use what she calls discovery driven growth. This approach is basically a plan for learning more as the launch process moves forward. The part that I like about this way of doing things is that it doesn't require the product manager to have a lot of analytical information at the start of the launch process. In my opinion that's a good idea simply because there generally isn't a lot of information available!"
To read the entire post, click here. read more...
Learning and Technology Specialist Erin Murphy at her Wharton School blog: "Once again, I found the 'quizzing for context' aspect of the Entrepreneruial Mindset by Ian MacMillan and Rita Gunther-McGrath to be an incredibly useful exercise for reducing the amount of uncertainty in a venture. The venture I have undertaken isn't necessarily a business venture, but more of a venture into the world of Student (Technology) Experience. I tried to use some of the questions posited in Entrepreneurial Mindset to try to understand the experience of a student at a university (particularly a business university). Here are some of the questions I was asking myself..." read more...
Laresa McIntyre of The Finance Compass writes, "I'm currently reading Discovery-Driven Growth by Rita McGrath & Ian McMillan and came across this quote which I thought was so appropriate for today's post: 'Whenever you see someone doing something really stupid in business, there's a good chance that he thinks he's being rewarded for it.' We all know this scenario and it doesn't usually turn out well for businesses. We want people to go left but they go right. And sometimes it's because we set the cheese at the end of the maze on the right, not the left. Our fault. How do we fix the problem? We need to look at the way our pay and incentive programs are set… read more...
In this interview in Enterprise Leadership, Ron Pierantozzi, the former Chief Innovation Officer at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., explains how he and his team helped jump-start innovation led growth programs.
Ron has been a huge supporter of discovery-driven growth, and this interview does a nice job of walking through the steps he took to get his company on the right track, including finding the right tools and setting up the right structures. I think you’ll find it interesting.
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