Management

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The Ambidextrous Organization

Corporate executives must constantly look backward, attending to the products and processes of the past, while also gazing forward, preparing for the innovations that will define the future. This mental balancing act is one of the toughest of all managerial challenges – it requires executives to explore new opportunities even as they work diligently to exploit existing capabilities – and it’s no surprise that few companies do it well. But as every businessperson knows, there are companies that do. What’s their secret? These organizations separate their new, exploratory units from their traditional, exploitative ones, allowing them to have different processes, structures, and cultures, at the same time, they maintain tight links across units at the senior executive level. Such ambidextrous organizations, as the authors call them, allow executives to pioneer radical or disruptive innovations while also pursuing incremental gains. Of utmost importance to the ambidextrous organization are ambidextrous managers – executives who have the ability to understand and be sensitive to the needs of very different kinds of businesses. They possess the attributes of rigorous cost cutters and free-thinking entrepreneurs while also maintaining the objectivity required to make difficult trade-offs. Almost every company needs to renew itself through the creation of breakthrough products and processes, but it shouldn’t do so at the expense of its traditional business. Building an ambidextrous organization is by no means easy, but the structure itself, combining organizational separation with senior team integration, is not difficult to understand. Given the executive will to make it happen, any company can become ambidextrous.

The Antecedents, Consequences, and Mediating Role of Organizational Ambidexterity

We investigated contextual organizational ambidexterity, defined as the capacity to simultaneously achieve alignment and adaptability at a business-unit level. Building on the leadership and organization context literatures, we argue that a context characterized by a combination of stretch, discipline, support, and trust facilitates contextual ambidexterity. Further, ambidexterity mediates the relationship between these contextual features and performance. Data collected from 4,195 individuals in 41 business units supported our hypotheses.

The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results

As information technology becomes increasingly essential within organizations, the reputation and role of the CIO has been diminishing. To regain credibility and avoid obscurity, CIOs must take on a larger, more strategic role. Here is a blueprint for doing exactly that. This book shows how CIOs can bridge the gap between IT and the rest of the organization and finally make IT a strategic advantage rather than a cost sink.

Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don’t Know

Risk Intelligence gives executives and business managers a simple mental model and simple tools to manage these risks. According to the author’s model, risks fall into two categories: knowable and therefore learnable, and unknowable and therefore difficult to prepare for. The book not only shows readers how to analyse their knowable risks but helps them to appreciate the quality and utility of their own analysis. As it turns out, some people have a higher risk IQ than others and therefore analyse and manage risks more effectively. This book helps people of all risk aptitudes to assess and improve their risk IQs.

Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape

In his landmark book Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough demonstrated that because useful knowledge is no longer concentrated in a few large organizations, business leaders must adopt a new, ‘open’ model of innovation. Using this model, companies look outside their boundaries for ideas and intellectual property (IP) they can bring in, as well as license their unutilized home-grown IP to other organizations. In Open Business Models, Chesbrough takes readers to the next step – explaining how to make money in an open innovation landscape. He provides a diagnostic instrument enabling you to assess your company’s current business model, and explains how to overcome common barriers to creating a more open model. He also offers compelling examples of companies that have developed such models – including Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Air Products. In addition, Chesbrough introduces a new set of players – ‘innovation intermediaries’ – who facilitate companies’ access to external technologies. He explores the impact of stronger IP protection on intermediate markets for innovation, and profiles firms (such as Intellectual Ventures and Qualcomm) that center their business model on innovation and IP. This vital resource provides a much-needed road map to connect innovation with IP management, so companies can create and capture value from ideas and technologies – wherever in the world they are found.

Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris explain how many successful organizations are using data creatively to beat the competition. High-performance businesses are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that are, in turn, generating impressive business results. Their secret weapon? Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling supported by powerful information technology and data-savvy senior leaders. Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples—from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay’s, Capital One, Harrah’s, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia and the Boston Red Sox—illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics.