Introduction: My Innovation Journey

The Dartmouth’s Internet strategy: Charles Davant, “The D, Launching On-Line Version, Enters Cyberspace,” The Dartmouth, May 23, 1995, http://thedartmouth.com/1995/05/23/news/the.

Chapter 1: The Innovation Imperative

Background on Thomas Edison: Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World (New York: Crown, 2007).

Definitions of innovation: Hutch Carpenter, “25 Definitions of Innovation,” Blogging Innovation, August 25, 2010, www.business-strategy-innovation.com/wordpress/2010/08/25-definitions-of-innovation/.

Accounting Hall of Fame: Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, “The Accounting Hall of Fame,” http://fisher.osu.edu/departments/accounting-and-mis/the-accounting-hall-of-fame/.

Procter & Gamble definitions of innovation: Bruce Brown and Scott D. Anthony, “How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate,” Harvard Business Review, June 2010.

“Strategic inflection points offer promises as well as threats”: Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company (New York: Currency, 1996).

Shortening corporate life span: Richard N. Foster and Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market—And How to Successfully Transform Them (New York: Currency/Doubleday, 2001).

Holly’s laptop: Scott D. Anthony, “Lessons from My Daughter’s Laptop,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, April 14, 2011, http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2011/04/lessons_from_my_daughters_lapt.html.

Parenting case study: William A. Sahlman, “Parenting Magazine,” Case 9-291-015 (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1990).

Innovator’s DNA work: Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, December 2009; and Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

Hollywood pitch: Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (New York: Random House, 2007).

Chapter 2: The Masters of Innovation

Steve Blank: Steve Gary Blank, Four Steps to the Epiphany (San Mateo, CA: Cafepress.com, 2005).

Clayton Christensen: Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997); Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003); Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, and Erik A. Roth, Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004); Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008); Clayton M. Christensen, Jason Hwang, and Jerome Grossman, The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009).

Peter Drucker: Peter F. Drucker, “The Discipline of Innovation,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1985; Peter F. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: HarperCollins, 1985).

Thomas Alva Edison: Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park.

Richard Foster: Foster and Kaplan, Creative Destruction; Richard N. Foster, Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (New York: Summit Books, 1986).

Vijay Govindarajan: Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005); Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2010); Jeffrey R. Immelt, Vijay Govindarajan, and Chris Trimble, “How GE Is Disrupting Itself,” Harvard Business Review, October 2009.

Bill James: Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Free Press, 2001); Scott D. Anthony, “Major League Innovation,” Harvard Business Review, October 2009.

A. G. Lafley: A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan, The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation (New York: Random House, 2008); A. G. Lafley, “What Only the CEO Can Do,” Harvard Business Review, May 2009.

Roger Martin: Roger L. Martin, The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2007); Roger L. Martin, The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009).

Michael Mauboussin: Michael J. Mauboussin, More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Conventional Places (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Michael J. Mauboussin, Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009).

Rita McGrath: Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, “Discovery-Driven Planning,” Harvard Business Review, July–August 1995; Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009).

Joseph Schumpeter: Joseph R. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942).

Chapter 3: The Mount Rushmore of Innovation

“The customer rarely buys”: Peter F. Drucker, Managing for Results (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1964).

Various Edison quotes: Gerald Beals, “Thomas Alva Edison ‘Quotes,’” Thomas Alva Edison, American Inventor, 1847–1931, Web site, 1996, www.thomasedison.com/quotes.html.

“What Facebook did was people-centric, not photo-centric”: James Joaquin, quoted in Jefferson Graham, “Facebook’s ‘Tagging’ Option Is a Big Hit with Photo Sharing,” USA Today, September 23, 2009, www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-09-22-facebook-photo-sharing-tagging_N.htm.

Chapter 4: Innovation’s Seven Deadly Sins

The Economist chart about the number of blades: “The Cutting Edge,” The Economist, March 16, 2006, www.economist.com/node/5624861?story_id=5624861.

Sin of gluttony: James Clayton, Bradley Gambill, and Douglas Harned, “The Curse of Too Much Capital: Building New Businesses in Large Corporations,” McKinsey Quarterly, no. 3 (August 1999).

Sin of envy: Govindarajan and Trimble, The Other Side of Innovation.

Sin of wrath: Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009).

Week 1: Discovering Opportunities

Day 1

Information about the post office: Scott D. Anthony, “The Key to Spotting Disruption Before It Happens,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, May 4, 2010, http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2010/05/the_key_to_spotting_disruption.html.

Growth-gap death spiral: Christensen and Raynor, The Innovator’s Solution, chapter 9.

“By the time the writing is on the wall”: Christensen et al., Seeing What’s Next, conclusion.

Faraci at newspaper industry conference: Rich Edmonds, “Timely Tough Love for the Industry,” PoynterOnline, April 15, 2008, http://legacy2.poynter.org/column.asp?id=123&aid=141581.

Day 2

Lafley quote: The quote was from a discussion with the author at the May 2008 PDMA and IIR Front End of Innovation conference in Boston. A summary version of this conversation appears in Scott D. Anthony, “Game-Changing at Procter & Gamble,” Strategy Innovation 6, no. 4 (2008), www.innosight.com/documents/protected/SI/JulyAugust2008StrategyandInnovation.pdf. For a full transcript, e-mail the author at [email protected].

Day 3

Job-to-be done lens: Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Gerald Berstell, and Denise Nitterhouse, “Finding the Right Job for Your Product,” MIT Sloan Management Review 48, no. 3 (2007).

“The customer rarely buys”: Drucker, Managing for Results.

Day 4

Different types of nonconsumption: W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005); Christensen and Raynor, The Innovator’s Solution, chapter 4; C. K. Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2006).

ChotuKool story: Matthew J. Eyring, Mark W. Johnson, and Hari Nair, “New Business Models in Emerging Markets,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2011.

Day 5

Tata Nano story: Mark W. Johnson, Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2010); Scott D. Anthony, “Is the Tata Nano Really ‘The People’s Car’?” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, November 13, 2009, http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2009/11/is_the_nano_really_the_peoples.html.

Day 6

“Do the job of discovering the job”: Scott D. Anthony et al., The Innovator’s Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2008), chapter 4.

Week 2: Blueprinting Ideas

Day 8

Adapting and adopting from another field: David Kord Murray, Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (New York: Penguin Group, 2009).

Background on MinuteClinic: Richard Bohmer and Jonathan P. Groberg, “QuickMedx, Inc.,” Case 9-603-049 (Boston: Harvard Business School, 2002).

Day 9

Netflix contest: Steve Lohr, “A $1 Million Research Bargain for Netflix, and Maybe a Model for Others,” New York Times, September 21, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/technology/internet/22netflix.html.

Day 10

Strategy canvas: Kim and Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy; see also Anthony et al., The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, 130.

Day 11

Telephone service example: Anthony et al., The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, 69.

Gillette example: Ellen Byron, “Gillette Sharpens Its Pitch for Expensive Razor,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122325275682206367.html.

Gillette Guard example: Brown and Anthony, “How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate.”

Day 12

Overview of disruptive technology: Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma; Christensen and Raynor, The Innovator’s Solution.

Day 13

Apple revenues: Figures from Apple’s financial filings, available at http://investor.apple.com/sec.cfm.

Definition of business model: Johnson, Seizing the White Space.

Day 14

Idea résumé: Anthony et al., The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, 129.

Week 3: Assessing and Testing Ideas

Day 15

“For every one of our failures”: Scott Cook, quoted in Jena McGregor, “How Failure Breeds Success,” BusinessWeek, July 10, 2006.

Day 16

Original four P’s article: Scott D. Anthony, “The 4 P’s of Innovation,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, June 10, 2010, blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2010/06/the_4ps_of_innovation.htm.

Day 17

Discovery-driven planning process: McGrath and MacMillan, Discovery-Driven Growth.

Day 18

Integrated experiments: Clark G. Gilbert and Matthew J. Eyring, “Beating the Odds When You Launch a New Venture,” Harvard Business Review, May 2010.

TVinContext story: Scott D. Anthony, The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 103–104.

Day 19

Hollywood pitch: Heath and Heath, Made to Stick.

Day 20

Dow Corning thought experiment: Johnson, Seizing the White Space, 59.

Coffee story: Scott D. Anthony, “Innovators: Become Active Experimenters,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, March 29, 2010, http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2010/03/innovators_become_active_experimenters.html.

Day 21

Confirmation bias example: A. H. Hastorf and H. Cantril, “They Saw a Game: A Case Study,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49 (1954): 129–134.

Wisdom of crowds: Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (New York: Penguin Group, 2006); James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (Anchor: Garden City, NY, 2005).

Week 4: Moving Forward

Day 22

Benefits of scarcity on innovation: Anthony, The Silver Lining.

Downside of abundance: Clayton et al., “Curse of Too Much Capital.”

Heath brothers’ thought experiment: Heath and Heath, Made to Stick, 119–120.

Goals and bounds tool: Anthony et al., The Innovators’ Guide to Growth, 27–30.

Day 23

Richard Foster’s research: Foster and Kaplan, Creative Destruction.

R&R case study: Howard M. Stevenson and Jose-Carlos Jarillo Mossi, “R&R,” Case 9-386-019 (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1985); Anthony, The Silver Lining, chapter 6.

Day 24

Core competence: C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel, “The Core Competence of the Corporation,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1990.

Xiameter study: Johnson, Seizing the White Space, chapter 3.

Day 25

Microsoft story: Robert A. Guth, “Microsoft Bid to Beat Google Builds on a History of Misses,” Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2009; Scott D. Anthony, “Microsoft: Letting Disruption Slip Through Its Fingers,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, January 16, 2009, http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2009/01/microsoft_letting_disruption_s.html.

Linksys and Brad Anderson stories: Anthony et al., The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, chapter 8.

“If you want to really continually revitalize the service”: Jeff Bezos, interview with Innosight, October 13, 2008.

Day 26

Study on failures: M. A. Maidique and B. J. Zirger, “New Product Learning Cycle,” Research Policy14 (1985): 299–313.

Football coaches making suboptimal decisions: Mauboussin, Think Twice.

Day 27

Christensen’s “ticking clock”: Christensen and Raynor, The Innovator’s Solution, chapter 9.

Day 28

Innovator’s DNA: Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen, The Innovator’s DNA.