Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation: How Companies Can Seize Opportunities in the Face of Technological Change

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Summary: A worthwhile and important study on how corporations die.
Review: I found Mr. Utterback's book to be an excellent book on the reasons for the inability of existing corporations to make the needed rapid adoption of changes necessary to compete in a world of punctuated technological changes.I found his editors lacking in their permitting too many academic attitudes filter through to the final version. Too many refereneces to "Utterback, our and my". Tiresome and pedantic in places. All in all an excellent peice of work though. Glad to have read it and I will undoubtedly read it again. Congratulations Mr. Utterback on an important piece of work. Dan Taylor [e-mail]

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Summary: Untangles the Web of Confustion Surrounding Innovation
Review: Utterback does a superb job of providing real world examples of how innovation can change the landscape of your business. The book provides a clear understanding of the life cycle of innovation and the behaviors within a firm as they migrate from a focus on product innovation to a focus on process innovation.

The book provides a guide that can be applied to any industry, any product in any time. It gives the reader the ability to identify what phase of innovation their company is in and helps them predict how other companies are behaving today and how they might behave in the future in the face of direct competitive challenges.

The book also clearly demonstrates that innovation that can wipe you out will seldom come from the "Usual Suspects". Not those you see at your direct competitors, but from those companies that see the weaknesses and deficiencies in your products and redefine how they could be overcome with new technology.

I found this book to be a perfect balance of academic principles and cold hard business reality. A very enjoyable read that has provided me with yet another valuable tool to use in developing strategies to defend existing markets and tapping into new.

It focuses on how management must think about new innovations in technology and processes. Ultimately to survive they must not shrink away from a technological threat, but face it head on.

Most companies defend their position by intensely focusing on how to make their existing product, better, cheaper and faster. Ultimately they realize that as shinny, beautiful and cheap as they have made their latest buggy whip, their customer has lost interest in the face of some new technology.

Cheaper, faster, better, smarter will only keep your doors open for so long and microscopically staring down on both your customers needs and your products attributes, may leave you standing outside looking in.

Great read!

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Summary: Technological Change: Peril or Opportunity?
Review: Utterback explains "how companies can seize opportunities in the face of technological change." There are dozens (hundreds?) of other books on the same subject, notably those written by Geoffrey A. Moore. I rate this book so highly because it is exceptionally well-organized and well-written, because it examines several offbeat subjects (eg the development of the typewriter and the evolution of the typewriter industry, the development of the incandescent electric light), and because Utterback focuses so intensely -- and so effectively -- on real-world situations in which the "dynamics of innovation" are manifest. This book is very informative but also great fun to read. (Those who enjoy it as much as I did are urged to read both The History of Invention and The Lever of Riches.) Chapter 4 revisits the the dynamics of the innovation model (Figure 1-1) and then in Chapter 5, Utterback shifts his attention to developments within the plate glass manufacturing industry. In Chapter 6, he examines the innovation differences between assembled and nonassembled products. Subsequent chapters sustain the discussion of "the power of innovation in the creation of an industry" and then, in Chapter 9, Utterback "draws together some of the lessons of earlier chapters and academic research to consider the relationship between the behaviors and strategies of firms with respect to technological innovation and long-term survival." He concludes his book (in Chapter 10) by addressing "the perennial management issue of how corporations can renew their technology, products, and processes as a basis for continued competitive vitality." It is obvious to all of us that even the strongest product and business strategy will eventually be overturned by technological change. Ours is an age in which change is the only constant. Therefore, as Utterbach explains so carefully and so eloquently, the challenge is to accept the inevitability of change which results from technological innovation ("discontinuities") and to sustain a commitment to cope effectively with such change. Only such a commitment "will win the day."