Adaptive Corporation

Author Alvin Toffler begins the book with a prologue titled "The Museum of Corporate Dinosaurs." He wrote from the perspective of the state of industry and management in the 1970s and early 1980s. The book was written as a report for internal use by Bell Telephone senior executives, and was released for publication in 1985. Young readers today will be shocked to learn that the dinosaur management models from those ancient times are operational today in many large organizations. Therein lies much of the value of this book--helping young managers-to-be recognize fossilized management principles when they see them, and see them they will. Toffler wrote that the old notions of corporate strength were obsolete even in the 1980s, and that new rules in the market place would reward agility and organizational learning capacity over wealth in the form of equipment and real estate. There was no Google at the time to illustrate his point--Toffler was a prescient observer of emerging trends. He saw the Bell System's proper role as that of an intelligence center that coordinated a wide range of technology thereby enabling a steady stream of cutting edge innovations. He essentially predicted the Google model of today. Bell had a rather modest notion of innovation at that time. Remember, this is the company credited with inventing the transistor but didn't see much use for it. In 1954 the height of innovation was offering telephones in colors other than black. The phone company was the poster child of its day for obstinate conservatism. Toffler saw different forces driving corporations in the future. He saw, for example, that managers must learn to recognize patterns and common causes behind a myriad of seemingly separate symptoms. He wrote about a "dangerous misconception" that makes problems seem "pattern-less or unconnected, and therefore subject to independent remedies." One of the main problems in large companies today is that they treat each individual corporate ache and pain as a separate problem unrelated to fundamental systemic forces. Reading this book reminds us that that a lot of corporate dinosaurs still roam the land. We have seen the arrogant "big three auto makers" fall from their leadership positions. Other dinosaur companies cannot escape the same fate eventually as they come up again market forces that catch them unprepared. The lessons Toffler taught us decades ago provide the ability to recognize dinosaur management and to appreciate the power of modern management models.