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Seeing Around Corners

Page 28

by Rita McGrath


  getting better: Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Random House, 2007).

  “spectacular”: Harry McCracken, “Satya Nadella Rewrites Microsoft’s Code,” Fast Company, September 18, 2017, https://www.fastcompany.com/40457458/satya-nadella-rewrites-microsofts-code.

  “in a constrained world”: Nusca, “The Man Who Is Transforming Microsoft.”

  “there’s the quest”: Adam Bryant, “Satya Nadella, Chief of Microsoft, on His New Role,” New York Times, February 20, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/business/satya-nadella-chief-of-microsoft-on-his-new-role.html.

  over $8.6 billion: Gregg Keizer, “Microsoft’s Enterprise Phone Strategy Flops as Revenue Evaporates,” Computerworld, May 1, 2017, https://www.computerworld.com/article/3193644/microsofts-enterprise-phone-strategy-flops-as-revenue-evaporates.html.

  “to achieve more”: Bryant, “Satya Nadella.”

  books for the blind: McCracken, “Satya Nadella Rewrites Microsoft’s Code,” https://www.fastcompany.com/40457458/satya-nadella-rewrites-microsofts-code.

  “Microsoft had built up”: Ibid.

  “inside of Redmond”: Ibid.

  “strong supporter ever since”: Ibid.

  had passed Microsoft by: Nick Wingfield, “A $7 Billion Charge at Microsoft Leads to Its Largest Loss Ever,” New York Times, July 21, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/technology/microsoft-earnings-q4.html.

  “now I love it”: Liam Tung, “Ballmer: I May Have Called Linux a Cancer but Now I Love It,” ZDNet, March 11, 2016, https://www.zdnet.com/article/ballmer-i-may-have-called-linux-a-cancer-but-now-i-love-it/.

  “I am with you”: McCracken, “Satya Nadella Rewrites Microsoft’s Code.”

  “profit by segment”: McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage.

  7. How Innovation Proficiency Defangs the Organizational Antibodies

  “they practice it”: Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).

  steel business worldwide: OECD Steel Committee, “Presentation for the Council Working Party on Shipbuilding,” July 9, 2009, https://www.oecd.org/sti/ind/43312347.pdf.

  “negative market trend”: “Klöckner & Co SE,” Boersengefluester, July 8, 2013, https://boersengefluester.de/newarticle/?newsId=13529.

  “A Global Perspective”: World Economic Forum, “Fostering Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship: A Global Perspective” (private session, Dalian, China, September 11, 2013), http://www3.weforum.org/docs/AMNC13/WEF_AMNC13_FosteringInnovationDrivenEntrepreneurship_SessionSummary.pdf.

  had gone mainstream: Sangeet Paul Choudary, “The Billion Dollar Startup Disruption,” Medium, May 30, 2013, https://medium.com/@sanguit/the-billion-dollar-startup-disruption-67d82e91281f.

  “where we started”: Gisbert Rühl, “From Steel Distributor to Digital Industry Platform,” YouTube, December 10, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJrKjxsze0s.

  industries they had touched: “It Will Revolutionize the Entire Industry,” Vodafone Institute, n.d., https://www.vodafone-institut.de/event/will-revolutionize-entire-industry.

  metals service center: Gisbert Rühl, “Disrupting the Steel Industry Through Platforms,” SlidesLive, May 8, 2018, https://slideslive.com/38907723/disrupting-the-steel-industry-through-platforms.

  new approach was necessary: Gisbert Rühl, “We Want to Revolutionise the Industry,” interview by Hansjörg Honegger, Swisscom, October 16, 2017, https://www.swisscom.ch/en/business/enterprise/themen/digital-business/digitalisierung-im-stahlhandel.html.

  “minimum viable product”: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011).

  disappointing results: Alex Moazed, “Why GE Digital Failed,” Inc., January 8, 2018, https://www.inc.com/alex-moazed/why-ge-digital-didnt-make-it-big.html.

  “non-hierarchical communication”: Klöckner & Co., “Annual General Meeting 2017” (presentation, Düsseldorf, May 12, 2017), https://www.kloeckner.com/dam/kco/files/en/investors/annua-general-meeting/2017/Kloeckner_Co_presentation_AGM2017.pdf.

  “Fuck-up nights”: Klöckner & Co., “Leading the Digital Transformation of Metal Distribution” (presentation, December 2017), https://www.kloeckner-i.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Kloeckner_Co_Digitalization_December-2017.pdf.

  “more agile overall”: Rühl, “We Want to Revolutionise the Industry.”

  profitability and growth: Martin Wocher, “A Metal Marketplace,” Handelsblatt Today, July 11, 2017, https://global.handelsblatt.com/companies/a-metal-marketplace-795869.

  useful tools and perspectives: Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson, Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future (Cambridge: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017).

  Steve Blank and Bob Dorf: Steve Blank and Bob Dorf, The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company (Pescadero, CA: K & S Ranch, 2012).

  Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur: Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).

  Ian MacMillan and Zenas Block: Zenas Block and Ian C. MacMillan, Corporate Venturing: Creating New Businesses Within the Firm (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1993).

  Clay Christensen and the Innosight folks: Scott D. Anthony, The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011); Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, and Erik A. Roth, Seeing What’s Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004); Clayton Christensen, David S. Duncan, and Taddy Hall, Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice (New York: Harper Business, 2016).

  Cindy Alvarez: Cindy Alvarez, Lean Customer Development: Build Products Your Customers Will Buy, The Lean Series, ed. Eric Ries (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2014).

  Curtis Carlson: Curtis Carlson, interview with author, January 10, 2019.

  and me: Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

  (tomorrow’s business): Rita Gunther McGrath, Alexander B. van Putten, and Ron Pierantozzi, “Does Wall Street Buy Your Growth Story? For How Long?,” Strategy & Leadership 46, no. 2 (2108): 3–10.

  an incentive for action: Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2009).

  opportunity portfolio analysis: Nancy Tennant Snyder, Unleashing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry, ed. D. L. Duarte (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).

  no consumer found exciting: McGrath and MacMillan, Discovery-Driven Growth.

  the rest is history: Meg Godlewski, “How Skunk Works Got Its Name,” General Aviation News, November 4, 2005, https://generalaviationnews.com/2005/11/04/how-skunk-works-got-its-name.

  The Soul of a New Machine: Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (Thorndike, ME: Thorndike Press, 1981).

  continuous innovation: Steve Blank, “Why Corporate Skunk Works Need to Die,” Forbes, November 10, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveblank/2014/11/10/why-corporate-skunk-works-need-to-die/#498e6ea83792.

  “customer discovery” process: Steven G. Blank, The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win (Foster City, CA: Cafepress.com, 2006).

  in other assets: William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity,” Harvard Business Review, September 2014.

  8. How Leadership Can and Must Learn to See Around Corners

  “the pressure skyrockets”: Thomas Kolditz, email communication with author, December 29, 2018.

  at work all day: Sally Helgesen, The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, 1st ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1990); Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work (New York
: Harper & Row, 1973).

  rather than hierarchies: Helgesen, The Female Advantage.

  “and pre-funding”: Gail Goodman, “Founders Can’t Scale: Gail Goodman at TEDxBeaconStreet,” YouTube, December 6, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NzBgfyRbho. Unless otherwise noted, all the quotes from Goodman in this section are from this talk or from Gail Goodman, “How to Negotiate the Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death” (address, Business of Software USA 2012), blog post by Mark T. Littlewood, February 26, 2013, https://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/.

  “use your resources more effectively”: Gail Goodman, interview with author, September 13, 2018.

  “team alignment and prioritization”: Ibid.

  The Advantage: Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012).

  “get it right”: Ibid.

  different approaches to leadership: L. J. Bourgeois and David R. Brodwin, “Strategic Implementation: Five Approaches to an Elusive Phenomenon,” Strategic Management Journal 5, no. 3 (1984): 241–64.

  “previously inconceivable”: “Everything We Do Starts by Blending the Sciences with the Humanities, the Robots with the Pencils,” Robots & Pencils, n.d., http://www.robotsandpencils.com/#expertise.

  “new and frontier technologies”: Ibid.

  “benefit our clients”: Ibid.

  “state of global capitalism”: Andrew Ross Sorkin, “World’s Biggest Investor Tells C.E.O.s Purpose Is the ‘Animating Force’ for Profits,” New York Times, January 27, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/business/dealbook/blackrock-larry-fink-letter.html.

  community creation: Steve Denning, “Resisting the Lure of Short-Termism: Kill ‘the World’s Dumbest Idea,’” Forbes, January 8, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/01/08/resisting-the-lure-of-short-termism-how-to-achieve-long-term-growth/#6e5f03931ca0.

  Martin Wolf of the Financial Times: Martin Wolf, “The Long and Painful Journey to World Disorder,” Financial Times, January 5, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/ef13e61a-ccec-11e6-b8ce-b9c03770f8b1.

  what happens to companies: William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity,” Harvard Business Review, September 2014.

  management teams and boards: “BlackRock Investment Stewardship’s Approach to Engagement on Human Capital Management,” BlackRock, March 2018, https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/publication/blk-commentary-engagement-on-human-capital-march2018.pdf.

  work on strategic inflection points: Andrew S. Grove, “Navigating Strategic Inflection Points,” Business Strategy Review 8, no. 3 (1997): 11–18.

  could be significant: See, for example, Ram Charan, “Conquering a Culture of Indecision,” Harvard Business Review, April 2001; Don Sull, The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World (New York: Harper Business, 2009); and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile Things That Gain from Disorder (New York: Random House, 2012).

  “not at risk”: Taleb, Antifragile Things.

  “regardless of their seniority”: Stanley McChrystal, with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2015).

  “objectives you do”: Adam Pisoni, “What Startups Can Learn from General McChrystal About Combining Strategy and Execution,” First Round Review, n.d., http://firstround.com/review/what-startups-can-learn-from-general-mcchrystal-about-combining-strategy-and-execution/.

  “heavy digital component”: Columbia Entrepreneurship, “@sgblank, @rgmcgrath, & @HarperCollins on Corp Innovation: Refactoring the Crazies,” YouTube, January 23, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2bvNB5G_eQ&feature=youtu.be.

  meticulously documented: Bryce G. Hoffman, American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company (New York: Crown, 2012).

  “putting together a plan”: Dinah Eng, “How Maxine Clark Built Build-A-Bear,” Fortune, March 16, 2012, http://archive.fortune.com/2012/03/16/smallbusiness/build-bear-maxine-clark.fortune/index.htm.

  “we will make it happen”: Veneta Rizvic, “Life in Balance: Sharon Price John Solves Work Challenges by Running,” St. Louis Business Journal, October 26, 2018, https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2018/10/26/life-in-balance-sharon-price-john-solves-work.html.

  nonetheless fail: Phil Rosenzweig, The Halo Effect . . . and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers (New York: Free Press, 2007); Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2018).

  “peacetime” leaders: Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers (New York: Harper Business, 2014).

  leadership in crisis: Thomas Kolditz, In Extremis Leadership: Leading as Though Your Life Depended on It (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2007).

  “how they were different”: Jena McGregor, “The Extreme Leadership That Got the Thai Soccer Boys out of the Cave Alive,” Washington Post, July 10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2018/07/10/the-extreme-leadership-that-got-the-thai-soccer-boys-out-of-the-cave/?utm_term=.930a16f8d991.

  “deny the possibility of failure”: Kolditz, In Extremis Leadership.

  “I’ve got your back”: Justin Bariso, “Microsoft’s CEO Sent an Extraordinary Email to Employees After They Committed an Epic Fail,” Inc., February 23, 2017, https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/microsofts-ceo-sent-an-extraordinary-email-to-employees-after-they-committed-an-.html.

  “demands of wartime”: Kolditz, email communication with author.

  9. Seeing Around Corners in Your Own Life

  “more desirable direction”: Eric C. Sinoway, Howard’s Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life’s Work (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012).

  “joint ventures”: “Our Story,” Parliament, n.d., https://www.parliamentinc.com/conspire/.

  “Stakeholder Centered Coaching”: “Guaranteeing Measurable Results in Leadership Development on a Global Scale,” Marshal Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching, n.d., https://sccoaching.com/.

  “‘not big enough’”: David Gelles, “Living as an Example of ‘Leading by Example,’” New York Times, January 6, 2019.

  “tours of duty”: Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh, “Tours of Duty,” Harvard Business Review, June 2013.

  not comfortable with: David Egan, “Here Is What It Takes to Become a CEO, According to 12,000 LinkedIn Profiles,” Talent Blog, LinkedIn, https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/trends-and-research/2018/what-12000-ceos-have-in-common.

  “run something important”: Neil Irwin, “A Winding Path to the Top,” New York Times, September 10, 2016.

  “what I wanted to do”: Ryan McManus, interview with author, December 6, 2018. All the quotes from McManus in this section are from this interview.

  high-powered lawyer: Paula Davis-Laack, “I Used Design Thinking to Reinvent My Career: Here’s Why It Worked,” Fast Company, October 16, 2017, https://www.fastcompany.com/40481175/i-used-design-thinking-to-reinvent-my-career-heres-why-it-worked.

  Netflix Insider for a time: Harry McCracken, “How Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Became a Netflix Insider,” Fast Company, September 18, 2017, https://www.fastcompany.com/40469252/how-microsofts-satya-nadella-became-a-netflix-insider.

  “never planned to”: Clayton Christensen, “How Will You Measure Your Life?,” TedxBoston, 2012, https://tedxboston.org/speaker/christensen-1.

  “you want to be”: Drake Baer, “Clayton Christensen’s Personal Quest to Help You Measure Your Life,” Fast Company, May 18, 2012, https://www.fastcompany.com/1837732/clayton-christensens-personal-quest-help-you-measure-your-life.

  “actionable plan”: Matthew Brodsky, “Alum ‘AMP’ed’ to Support Education,” Wharton Magazine, October 6, 2015, http://whartonmagazine.com/blogs/alum-amped-to-support-education/#sthash.fWUNKSXY.dpbs.

  Acknowledgments

  “No One Notices”: Morgan House
l, “When You Change the World and No One Notices,” Collaborative Fund, September 3, 2016, http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/when-you-change-the-world-and-no-one-notices/.

  Index

  A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

  Page numbers in italics refer to figures.

  A

  Abraham, Jack, 30

  acceleration, 125

  actions, staggered, 104–8

  Acton, Brian, 21

  addiction, Facebook, 23

  Adobe, Kickbox program, 31–32

  The Advantage (Lencioni), 175

  advertising. See also privacy

  digital tracking, 18–19, 25

  discovery-driven planning, 114–17

  discriminatory, 20

  evolution of digital, 105–6

  AdWords (Google), 105–6

  Aereo, 35

  Aetna, 170

  agile methodology, 29–31, 38, 112–13. See also discovery-driven planning

  AI (artificial intelligence), 141

  Airbnb, 146

  Allard, J, 130–34

  Allen, James, 30

  Allgood, Greg, 121

  Alvarez, Cindy, 159

  Amazon

  agile decision-making, 29–30

  competition from, 25

  privacy, 19

  Web Services, 146

  America Online (AOL), 41

  Andreessen, Marc, 198

  Anthony, Scott, 36, 153

  Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Taleb), 103–4

  Antioco, John, 82–83

  antitrust allegations, 23–25

  AOL (America Online), 41

  Apatoff, Robert S., 35–36

 

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