Strategic Management in the Innovation Economy: Strategic Approaches and Tools for Dynamic Innovation Capabilities

Strategy Management in the Innovation Economy is an anthology of important works by those that study strategy, its implications, and its future. This is not a business book, but rather it contains a number of essays on the future of strategy and its implementation. This gives the book an academic nature that is a breath of fresh air for people studying issues of strategy in general and the future of strategy in particular. The book is organized into six parts each focusing on a different aspect of strategy. The value of the different parts varies but overall the first and last two sections are the most interesting and provocative. Section I: The innovation economy and strategy discusses the evolution of strategy and the impact of innovation. Section II: The changing nature of business and challenges to traditional strategic management is the best part of the book. Here the authors remind us what strategy is really all about - decisions and they provide new frameworks and ways of thinking about strategy. Section III: A new strategy mindset of the innovation economy frankly was interesting but did not push the envelope as much as I would have hoped for. According to the articles in section 3, the future of strategy is about new forms of sourcing and creating value networks. Section IV: Strategy, business models, and organizational energy are among the best in the book. Here the articles focus on the notions surrounding business models, their connection to strategy, and how they shape strategies going forward. This section talks about the notion of Poised Strategy, which I did not find as impressive as it seems like strategy options and contingency planning more than anything. Section V: New strategic management processes and tools was interesting particularly given the earlier chapters that questioned the validity of strategy processes and tools in the first place. The chapter talks about business model innovation, disruption, and other forms of creative destruction. There is a heavy reliance on the principles of "sense and respond" to these strategic tools. Section VI: Strategic Leadership and managing in the innovating economy. The final chapter builds on the other elements of the book. It pays particular focus to the notion of poised strategy and the believe that organizational energy equals management values and innovation. Much of what is in the section is helpful. The book is strong and recommended for people looking to further their study of strategy, its future, and its underpinnings. It is an academic book and not for the faint hearted reader. I found that my having read Christensen's Innovators Dilemma, Hamel's Leading the Revolution and other books helped in getting the most out of these articles. Most of my notes and dog eared pages are in Sections 2 and 5 as I found them to be the most helpful.

At first glance I thought this book is an ambitious one: why the focus on innovation economy (is it really different?), and will another book on strategic management have anything significantly new - and practical - to say? The wish that I have, and I guess many other business managers, is for simple and practical strategy approaches and tools to handle the speed and (often bewildering) innovative variety of our current business and economic life. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the authors not only pose the same questions right at the outset, but then proceed to make a valid case for the innovation economy, and also new strategic management approaches and tools for its challenges, through extensive case examples of countries, industries and companies. But what really delighted me was the original and very appropriate analogous use of Einstein's theorem of energy - E=MC?2, to show how companies can rejuvenate their innovative energies, and also how Moore's law and Metcalfe's law work in conjunction to increase innovative power of companies. Of course, these make sense only if used strategically well through a new strategy approach, termed `poised strategy' by the authors, that includes risk-factored experimentation with new business models. The real value of the book for both managers and researchers, in my view, is the summarization, condensation and comparison of all the key dimensions of innovation, while showing you practically how to devise and implement a strategic innovation process in a holistic way (in addition to the traditional mechanistic processes). The valuable ideas of e.g. Chesbrough on open innovation, and Christensen on disruptive innovation, are elegantly covered and integrated as a platform for the book's central message. I'm happy to see that the authors, unlike too many writers on the subject, recognize that current strategy approaches and processes - most still rooted in the industrial economy, have shortcomings in their application in the innovation economy. Product innovation is ineffective if not seen within process innovation, network innovation and innovation in business model design, the latter which is especially crucial today. The issues underlying business model innovation are handled exceptionally well, with sound understanding through a variety of industry and business examples. You'll find plenty of checklists and summaries, including principles for reinventing business models, ways of rejuvenating organizational energies, driving growth through innovation, new strategic management processes and tools, and frameworks for handling new strategic leadership challenges in the innovation economy. I think this book is going to be seen as a seminal book, making sense of the often confusing writings on innovation and strategy that abound today, and providing a new benchmark in strategy thinking and doing. As a possible note of criticism, I think the scope of the book is probably too large, with its con