Summary

Named one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine

From the greatest minds in business today comes a groundbreaking new blueprint for executing the next stage of customer-created value. C.K. Prahalad, the world's premier business thinker, and IT scholar M.S. Krishnan unveil the critical missing link in connecting strategy to execution--building organizational capabilities that allow companies to achieve and sustain continuous change and innovation.

The New Age of Innovation reveals that the key to creating value and the future growth of every business depends on accessing a global network of resources to co-create unique experiences with customers, one at a time. To achieve this, CEOs, executives, and managers at every level must transform their business processes, technical systems, and supply chain management, implementing key social and technological infrastructure requirements to create an ongoing innovation advantage.

In this landmark work, Prahalad and Krishnan explain how to accomplish this shift--one where IT and the management architecture form the corporation's fundamental foundation. This book provides strategies for

To successfully compete on the battlefields of 21st-century business, companies must reinvent their processes and culture in order to sustain innovative solutions. The New Age of Innovation is a complete program for achieving this transformation to meet the needs of the end consumer of the future.

Choice Review

The classic image of innovation is one of working surreptitiously on a project and when ready, launching it in the market to take the competition and customers by surprise. Prahalad (Univ. of Michigan; named the world's "most influential" management thinker by the Times of London and BusinessWeek) and Krishnan (business information and technology, Univ. of Michigan) turn the concept of innovation on its head. They argue that true innovation is co-creation, an idea created along with the customer and, more importantly, one that is customized specifically for each customer. Thus, TutorVista, a tutoring organization based in India, offers classes to students that allow each student to determine the number of hours, the pace, and the time. The authors introduce the concept of N = 1 (for one customer at a time) and R = G (where resources are not housed in just the firm, but are accessed from a wide variety of sources, hence global) as a template for customer-centric innovation. Buttressing their work with numerous examples from both the developed and the developing world, the authors make a plausible argument for their new model of innovation. The book is a practical roadmap for managers trying to navigate in a highly competitive world. Summing Up: Summing Up: Recommended. Professionals/practitioners. R. Subramanian Montclair State University