RECOMMENDED READING for CHANGING TIMES
The Covid 19 crisis has disrupted the entire world, but even so it’s not the only big news of the day. From a broader perspective, it’s clear that we’re in the midst of a large-scale process not of small changes and the current crises, but of fundamental change that’s affecting all aspects of society on a long-term basis. The structure of the economy, the profusion of technology, our social structures, and our cultural values are all changing rapidly, and permanently, and so is the very structure of our politics.These are fascinating and frightening times, and if you’re like us, you’re always looking for insights into the important patterns of change. And if, like us, you’re going to be at home for a few weeks and you’re looking for some good reading about this new world of ours, here are four suggestions: one important new book innovation, two on economics that have innovation as core themes, and one on politics and the role of strategy and innovation across America’s political landscape.
NEW on INNOVATION
IMPLEMENTING AN AGILE INNOVATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Noted innovation expert Tom Brazil has written a very fine guidebook describing how his company, ICS Inc., has successfully implemented a comprehensive innovation system, the tools they used, and the results they have achieved so far. Tom is quite candid and accessible in his writing style, and provides excellent advice and countless specific tips on what has worked well for ICS. This book is a valuable contribution to every innovation library, and if you’re interested in the guts of innovation management, then you ought to get it and read it.
An excerpt:
“This book will serve as a useful guide for those interested in implementing an agile innovation management system. You will find here that the way we implement the framework at our organization was also the result of innovative thinking. In particular, we concluded that due to the agility requirements of portfolio management – along with our commitment to be as efficient as possible in our innovation practice – we would need to invent some unique capabilities that were simply not in the market.
“They are discussed in this book:
An automated means of pivotingthe portfolio in an objective manner
An automated means of evaluating prototypesin an objective manner
An objective means of selecting from the pool of eligible ideas for the next projects to initiate, taking into consideration the makeup of both the current and desired innovation portfolios in relation to strategic intent
“The results we have achieved at ICS offer powerful endorsements for the innovation path we have taken. Some of these achievements are listed below:
Cultural alignment across the entire organization, with Managers of Innovation certified by the International Association of Innovation Professionals(IAOIP) at the executive, director, R&D and Service Delivery levels
Multiple innovative solutions created and delivered for our clients, resulting in more than $6 million in value to our customers
Exceptional performanceratings by our DoD customers
Washington Technology Industry Innovators Finalist award
Creation of an innovation-oriented small business joint venture called RedTeam Engineering (RTE). Managed by ICS, RTE is one of only 25 Small Business Awardees for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Systems Engineering, Technology and Innovation (SETI) 10-year, $7.5 Billion contract. SETI is the first DoD contract focused squarely on innovation, not only the final solutions developed, but in the methodologies used to design, engineer and deliver those solutions.
“It is because of these and other outstanding results that my colleagues and I are so enthusiastic about the power and importance of innovation. Hence, the goal of this book is to enable you to learn from the lessons that we at ICS learned as the result of our time spent in the discovery, development, testing, and implementation of this framework.”
It is of particular interest to InnovationLabs that the framework which ICS used is the Agile Innovation Master Plan, which has been the subject of a series of our own books, written during the last ten years, including Permanent Innovation, The Agile Innovation Master Plan, The Innovation Formula, and Agile Innovation (co-authored with Moses Ma and Po Chi Wu).
NEW on ECONOMICS
It’s now quite clear that we are in the midst of the transition to a new economic system on a global basis. This is occurring not because of any planning or due to the leadership of any government, central bank, or economic theorists, but as the result of the natural (and possibly unnatural) evolution of society, technology, trade, and population dynamics around the world. Two recent books explore this evolving situation and provide many insights into what’s coming:
CAPITALISM, ALONE
Renowned economist Branko Milanovic has written a compelling historical analysis of the evolution of industrial capitalism over its entire history of two hundred years, with a particular focus on the last fifty years and the emergent global competition between the Western, liberal form of open capitalism (which he calls “liberal, meritocratic capitalism”), and the Chinese form of state-sponsored capitalism (which he calls “political capitalism”).The book is very well written, and happily it is presented in a non-technical manner for the general reader. If you’re thinking about what’s coming over the next decades, you’ll find many insights here.
An excerpt:
“The two types of capitalism now seem to be competing with each other. They are led, respectively, by the United States and China. Political capitalism has certain features that make it attractive to the political elites in the rest of the world and not only in Asia: the system provides greater autonomy to political elites. It is also attractive to many ordinary people because of the high growth rates that it seems to promise.
“On the other hand, liberal capitalism has many well-known advantages, the most important being that democracy and the rule of law are values in themselves, and both, arguably, can be credited with encouraging faster economic development throughout promoting innovation and allowing social mobility, and thus providing approximately equal changes of success for all. It is the reneging on some crucial aspects of this implicit value system, namely a movement toward the creation of a self-perpetuating upper class and polarization between the elites and the rest, that represents the most important threat to the longer-term viability of liberal capitalism.
“I focus on the social and economic structures that the two systems reproduce, especially as they affect matters of income inequality and class structure. The way the two systems deal with these matters will, I believe, determine their relative attractiveness and stability.”
COMPLETING CAPITALISM
You already know that the Mars Company spans the globe selling well-known snacks and candies, including the Mars Bar, M&Ms, Wrigley chewing gum, Altoids, and also many food and pet food brands. What you may not know if that Mars is a family-owned company, and as such it’s not subjected to the whims of Wall Street or the distorting pressures of quarterly profits, and thus the company’s owners and leadership have taken a longer-term view of business and the economy.Mars has its own in-house think-tank, and two leaders of the think tank, Bruno Roche and Jay Jakub, have recently published a fascinating discussion about the transformation of capitalism away from the Friedman/Chicago school’s obsession with shareholder returns to the exclusion of all else, to a balanced view that seeks a proper balance between financial capital as well as human capital and natural capital.This work is not merely a matter of theory for Mars, as they’ve been able to apply the principles they’ve uncovered in experiments with Mars businesses. Hence, this is a book of both useful theory and compelling practice.
An excerpt:
“Our approach is based on the simple assumption that most business sustainability issues can be solved effectively and durably, not through ad hoc corporate social responsibility initiatives or philanthropy, but through innovative business model approaches that have the ability to drive both social and environmental performance while also delivering strong financial performance.
“The management theory we are developing holds that business can simultaneously drive both profits and wide mutual benefits to people and planet through understanding and managing multiple forms of capital, namely human, social, natural, and shared financial capital.”
NEW ON POLITICS
As we shift toward the summer we know that we’ll see the heat level of the American presidential election steadily rise. We also know that we’re in for a long and likely unpleasant campaign season, as it will be a contest not only between two individual candidates, but also between two quite different world views.Trump is not just Trump, he’s the voice an entire movement and the embodiment of a very specific world view. The Democrat he will face will also not just be an individual candidate, but he or she will represent a deeply contrasting viewpoint about what America stands for, and its role in the world. All this promises to make 2020 into an epic contest, a war.
WINNING THE WAR FOR AMERICA
InnovationLabs Senior Partner Langdon Morris has written a guidebook to the American political landscape that explains how Republican strategists have systematically outplayed their Democratic counterparts over the last thirty years. Republicans know how to win elections, and they’ve developed a highly refined toolkit of strategies and tactics that have produced consistent results, but in doing so they’ve left ethics far behind.
An excerpt:
“There have been times in history when America’s political parties generally agreed on what needed to be done, and put forth candidates who promoted variations on common themes. Those elections turned on issues of likeability, charisma, and persuasiveness, and less on actual policy differences.
“We do not live in one of those times.
“The values, visions, and the policies of today’s parties are enormously different, which consequently raises the stakes considerably. But which vision of the future do Americans prefer? This is what our war is all about.
“The War for America is an ideological war, a war of ideas, and also a war of contrasting cultures and values. It’s a policy war, a class war, a race war, and a war about the role of money in society. Conflicting ideas about America’s future are at play, and conflicting ideas as well about the proper role of our government.
“Trump’s victory in 2016 was a testament to the advanced state of Republican acumen at strategy, execution, and branding, but it was surely abetted by the ineptitude of the Democrats. Strong Republican strategy elected Trump; weak Democratic strategy failed to stop that from happening. All of which raises some intriguing questions:
How did the Republicans manage to get Trump elected despite his shortcomings?
What is the essence of Republican strategy?
And what can the Democrats do to regain power?
“The outcome of the 2020 election battle may be determined by the popular vote count, or perhaps by the Electoral College vote count, or at worst, by a decision of the Supreme Court. But the pathway to the outcome will be shaped by the strategies that the two sides employ throughout the battle. Their capacity to seize strategic advantage, adapt to the other side’s moves, counter and adjust, to grab initiative, or having lost the initiative, to seize it back, will determine who shows up to vote, and who they vote for.
“This book is about these strategies.”
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Keep your distance, keep washing your hands, and look to these books to provide you with insights into the present and the future, to keep you learning and keep you enthralled.As always, we welcome your comments and feedback.
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