The Innovation Race Book Review
Today’s business environment is extremely competitive. Thrown inti the shark tank, leaders and HR professionals need to better prepare their companies to navigate the race to successfully change and innovate.
A passive armchair position is not an option for those looking to survive over the long term.
These are the key messages from husband-and-wife authors Andrew and Gaia Grant in The Innovation Race.
The book provides both practical and strategic tools to transform any organization into a more creative and productive one, regardless of its individual growth stage.
The authors suggest the drive to innovate has become a mad cut-throat dash towards an apparently unachievable goal. Readers are encouraged to recognize the ambiguities inherent in the widely-accepted idea that innovation is a race. The Grant question: Is it always a race? Does it need to be one? In challenging the race metaphor, the book also explores potential alternatives to it.
In addition, the Grants say innovating organizations tend to face a tension between the need for exploration of new growth ideas and the need to maintain and develop existing system for stability. The book hence unpacks the key factors underlying this tension and advises how it can be better managed for long term innovation success.
The Grants also dive beneath the surface and examine the cultural changes needed to support sustainable and less-competitive innovation.
They note that innovation should be more of a relay race than a marathon. To win it, companies need to have teamwork and a shared ethos across a group of contributors who pass the baton at the right moment every time.
Full of applicable checklist and real-life case studies from different cultures and contexts, The Innovation Race takes readers on a lively global adventure, lifting them out of their comfort zones and helping them to start seeking deeper values and different perspectives on innovation.
Readers will be urged to reevaluate what they understood about innovation and give their processes the boost they need to stay ahead of the game.
Title: The Innovation Race
Author: Andrew Grant & Gaia Grant
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Australia
Price: S$ 37.40
