Special teams dedicated to innovation initiatives inevitably run into conflict with the rest of the organization. The people responsible for ongoing operations view the innovators as undisciplined upstarts. The innovators dismiss the operations people as bureaucratic dinosaurs. It's natural to separate the two warring groups. But it's also dead wrong, say Tuck Business School's Govindarajan and Trimble. Nearly all innovation initiatives build on a firm's existing resources and know-how. When a group is asked to innovate in isolation, the corporation forfeits its main advantage over smaller, nimbler rivals-its mammoth asset base. The best approach is to set up a partnership between the dedicated team and the people who maintain excellence in ongoing operations, the company's performance engine. Such partnerships were key to the successful launch of new offerings by legal publisher Westlaw, Lucent Technologies, and WD-40. There are three steps to making the partnership work: First, decide which tasks the performance engine can handle, assigning it only those that flow along the same path as ongoing operations. Next, assemble a dedicated team to carry out the rest, being careful to bring in outside perspectives and create new norms. Last, proactively manage conflicts. The key here is having an innovation leader who can collaborate well with the performance engine and a senior executive who supports the dedicated team, prioritizes the company's long-term interests, and adjudicates contests for resources. The most basic-and the most complicated- problem in business is figuring out how to move from a great, high-level idea to practical, operational success. In this issue's Spotlight, HBR looks at some of the most vexing strategy-execution challenges: how to organize for innovation, motivate workers at all levels, sponsor creativity, and wield power effectively.

【書誌情報】

ページ数：12ページ

サイズ：A4

商品番号：HBSP-R1007F

発行日：2010/7/1

登録日：2012/3/28