- Design Principles for Adaptive Businesses
- Organization of the Book
- Basis of the Ideas
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Basis of the Ideas
Historically, most “big ideas” in management arose in the manufacturing sector and then spread to the service sector. Adaptive Businesses, too, are evolving in manufacturing (and retail) companies, but will sooner or later migrate to the service businesses. (Indeed, a top strategy executive of a major British manufacturer recently argued coherently that a premier American investment bank applies all four of the Design Principles and is no less adaptive than Nokia.)
So, this book builds on a robust intellectual foundation of research on manufacturers. I also present evidence from a study of over five hundred manufacturing and retail companies that I conducted a few years ago for the software firm SAP. I supplement these with stories, some from the media, but many others from over a quarter century of personal association with companies in industries that include steel wire, food, white goods, glass, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, consumer-packaged goods, and electronics. I have advised several CEOs—and other C-level executives—of global firms, led cross-organizational product-development efforts, and worked on the graveyard shift beside line workers carping about managerial idiocies. I protect their confidentiality by not naming them, but I do provide enough contextual information to make the stories meaningful.
Most importantly, I draw on many hours of interviews (and associated secondary research) that I have conducted at Nokia and Hewlett-Packard. To the best of my knowledge, Nokia has not given anyone else similar access to the executives involved. These two stories—Nokia’s in particular—present a comprehensive picture of the transformation that companies must undergo. I cannot credibly call for multidimensional change and then provide piecemeal examples cobbled together from different firms facing divergent challenges. For the record, neither company is—or has been—a client of mine. What they have created, they have done on their own.