MAN 5721 Strategy and Business Policy

Innovation is necessary for creating a bright, competitive future. In this collection, you'll find important insights on innovation drawn from the pages of the award-winning publication Leader to Leader. Written by some of the country's top thought leaders, including Clayton M. Christensen, Margaret J. Wheatley, and Gary Hamel, this collection makes innovation come alive in new and surprising ways. Focusing on different aspects and approaches of innovation, it delivers practical knowledge and advice that can mean the difference in your innovation efforts. Each article is packed with information backed by research and real-world examples and success stories. As a whole, you'll learn how innovation is accomplished, and specifically: How companies can learn innovation from the arts What innovation really is, and how it can be re-imagined How business model innovation needs to become a systematic, manageable process How the new world of work operates, in an "open" environment How to create a safe-space innovation zone How to find innovation opportunities where disciplines intersect How to make your organization capable of innovation in resources, processes, and values And more.

Why are elite jewelers reluctant to sell turquoise, despite strong demand? Why did leading investment bankers shun junk bonds for years, despite potential profits? Status Signals is the first major sociological examination of how concerns about status affect market competition. Starting from the basic premise that status pervades the ties producers form in the marketplace, Joel Podolny shows how anxieties about status influence whom a producer does (or does not) accept as a partner, the price a producer can charge, the ease with which a producer enters a market, how the producer's inventions are received, and, ultimately, the market segments the producer can (and should) enter. To achieve desired status, firms must offer more than strong past performance and product quality--they must also send out and manage social and cultural signals. Through detailed analyses of market competition across a broad array of industries--including investment banking, wine, semiconductors, shipping, and venture capital--Podolny demonstrates the pervasive impact of status. Along the way, he shows how corporate strategists, tempted by the profits of a market that would negatively affect their status, consider not only whether to enter the market but also whether they can alter the public's perception of the market. Podolny also examines the different ways in which a firm can have status. Wal-Mart, for example, has low status among the rich as a place to shop, but high status among the rich as a place to invest. Status Signals provides a systematic understanding of market dynamics that have--until now--not been fully appreciated.

Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns withanother groundbreaking work, this time to ask: why do some companies thrive inuncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research,buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins andhis colleague Morten Hansen enumerate the principles for building a truly greatenterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times. This book isclassic Collins: contrarian, data-driven and uplifting.