Productive Tensions
Productive Tensions

Author: Christopher B. Bingham

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-04-26

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0262369893

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How leaders can recast innovation’s toughest trade-offs—efficiency vs. flexibility, consistency vs. change, product vs purpose—as productive tensions. Why is leading innovation in today’s dynamic business environment so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90 percent of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80 percent of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6 percent are satisfied with their innovation performance. Should leaders aim for Steve Jobs-level genius, shower their projects with resources, or lean in to luck and embrace uncertainty? None of the above, say Christopher Bingham and Rory McDonald. Drawing on cutting-edge research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, in Productive Tensions Bingham and McDonald find that the most effective leaders and successful innovators embrace the tensions that arise from competing aims: efficiency or flexibility? consistency or change? product or purpose? Bingham and McDonald spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and they spell out, with dozens of detailed examples of both success and failure, how to navigate them. How do you excite customers about a product they’ve never imagined? When is it wise to accept what the data is telling you, and when should you ignore the data and plow forward anyway? How can you maintain stakeholders’ trust and support during radical unforeseen course corrections? Bingham and McDonald guide readers through innovation’s thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the US military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.

Productive Tensions
Productive Tensions

Author: Christopher B. Bingham

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9780262369909

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How leaders can recast innovation's toughest trade-offs—efficiency vs. flexibility, consistency vs. change, product vs purpose—as productive tensions. Why is leading innovation in today's dynamic business environment so distressingly hit-or-miss More than 90 percent of high-potential ventures don't reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80 percent of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6 percent are satisfied with their innovation performance. Should leaders aim for Steve-Jobs-level genius, or shower their projects with resources, or lean in to luck and embrace uncertainty None of the above, say Chris Bingham and Rory McDonald. Drawing on cutting-edge research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, in Productive Tensions Bingham and McDonald find that the most effective leaders and successful innovators embrace the tensions that arise from competing aims: efficiency or flexibility consistency or change product or purpose Bingham and McDonald spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and they spell out, with dozens of detailed examples of both success and failure, how to navigate them. How do you excite customers about a product they've never imagined When is it wise to accept what the data is telling you, and when should you ignore the data and plow forward anyway How can you maintain stakeholders' trust and support during radical unforeseen course corrections Bingham and McDonald guide readers through innovation's thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the US military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.

The 360° Corporation
The 360° Corporation

Author: Sarah Kaplan

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1503610438

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Companies are increasingly facing intense pressures to address stakeholder demands from every direction: consumers want socially responsible products; employees want meaningful work; investors now screen on environmental, social, and governance criteria; "clicktivists" create social media storms over company missteps. CEOs now realize that their companies must be social as well as commercial actors, but stakeholder pressures often create trade-offs with demands to deliver financial performance to shareholders. How can companies respond while avoiding simple "greenwashing" or "pinkwashing"? This book lays out a roadmap for organizational leaders who have hit the limits of the supposed win-win of shared value to explore how companies can cope with real trade-offs, innovating around them or even thriving within them. Suggesting that the shared-value mindset may actually get in the way of progress, bestselling author Sarah Kaplan shows in The 360° Corporation how trade-offs, rather than being confusing or problematic, can actually be the source of organizational resilience and transformation.

Productive Tensions
Productive Tensions

Author: Christopher B. Bingham

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0262547333

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How leaders can recast innovation’s toughest trade-offs—efficiency vs. flexibility, consistency vs. change, product vs purpose—as productive tensions. Why is leading innovation in today’s dynamic business environment so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90 percent of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80 percent of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6 percent are satisfied with their innovation performance. Should leaders aim for Steve Jobs-level genius, shower their projects with resources, or lean in to luck and embrace uncertainty? None of the above, say Christopher Bingham and Rory McDonald. Drawing on cutting-edge research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, in Productive Tensions Bingham and McDonald find that the most effective leaders and successful innovators embrace the tensions that arise from competing aims: efficiency or flexibility? consistency or change? product or purpose? Bingham and McDonald spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and they spell out, with dozens of detailed examples of both success and failure, how to navigate them. How do you excite customers about a product they’ve never imagined? When is it wise to accept what the data is telling you, and when should you ignore the data and plow forward anyway? How can you maintain stakeholders’ trust and support during radical unforeseen course corrections? Bingham and McDonald guide readers through innovation’s thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the US military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.

Trade-Off
Trade-Off

Author: Kevin Maney

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2010-08-17

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0385525958

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A Fresh and Important New Way to Understand Why We Buy Why did the RAZR ultimately ruin Motorola? Why does Wal-Mart dominate rural and suburban areas but falter in large cities? Why did Starbucks stumble just when it seemed unstoppable? The answer lies in the ever-present tension between fidelity (the quality of a consumer’s experience) and convenience (the ease of getting and paying for a product). In Trade-Off, Kevin Maney shows how these conflicting forces determine the success, or failure, of new products and services in the marketplace. He shows that almost every decision we make as consumers involves a trade-off between fidelity and convenience–between the products we love and the products we need. Rock stars sell out concerts because the experience is high in fidelity-–it can’t be replicated in any other way, and because of that, we are willing to suffer inconvenience for the experience. In contrast, a downloaded MP3 of a song is low in fidelity, but consumers buy music online because it’s superconvenient. Products that are at one extreme or the other–those that are high in fidelity or high in convenience–-tend to be successful. The things that fall into the middle-–products or services that have moderate fidelity and convenience-–fail to win an enthusiastic audience. Using examples from Amazon and Disney to People Express and the invention of the ATM, Maney demonstrates that the most successful companies skew their offerings to either one extreme or the other-–fidelity or convenience-–in shaping products and building brands.

The Ethical Algorithm
The Ethical Algorithm

Author: Michael Kearns

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-10-04

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0190948221

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Over the course of a generation, algorithms have gone from mathematical abstractions to powerful mediators of daily life. Algorithms have made our lives more efficient, more entertaining, and, sometimes, better informed. At the same time, complex algorithms are increasingly violating the basic rights of individual citizens. Allegedly anonymized datasets routinely leak our most sensitive personal information; statistical models for everything from mortgages to college admissions reflect racial and gender bias. Meanwhile, users manipulate algorithms to "game" search engines, spam filters, online reviewing services, and navigation apps. Understanding and improving the science behind the algorithms that run our lives is rapidly becoming one of the most pressing issues of this century. Traditional fixes, such as laws, regulations and watchdog groups, have proven woefully inadequate. Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific research, The Ethical Algorithm offers a new approach: a set of principled solutions based on the emerging and exciting science of socially aware algorithm design. Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth explain how we can better embed human principles into machine code - without halting the advance of data-driven scientific exploration. Weaving together innovative research with stories of citizens, scientists, and activists on the front lines, The Ethical Algorithm offers a compelling vision for a future, one in which we can better protect humans from the unintended impacts of algorithms while continuing to inspire wondrous advances in technology.

The Three Tensions
The Three Tensions

Author: Dominic Dodd

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2007-07-13

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0787988944

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A manager argued that he could either increase his business unit's margins or its sales, but not both. His chief executive reminded him of the time when people lived in mud huts and faced the stark choice between light and heat: punch a hole in the side of your hut and you let the daylight in but also the cold, or block up all the openings and you stay warm but sit in darkness. The invention of glass made it possible to overcome the dilemma—to let in the light but not the cold. How then, he asked his manager, will you resolve your dilemma between no sales or no margin improvement? Where is the glass? —From the Introduction "To win, leaders have to push their companies beyond trade-offs. They must find strong growth at premium returns, not one or the other. They must deliver great results today and build for the future at the same time, not push for earnings that can't be sustained. The Three Tensions is about having both at the same time, more of the time. I recommend it to any manager serious about winning." —James Kilts, former chairman, CEO, and president, The Gillette Company "Leadership can't be just about telling people what you expect of them. The Three Tensions sets out a range of helpful tactics leaders can adopt to really engage their people in the search for good performance on many fronts." —Andrew Cosslett, chief executive, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC "The Three Tensions speaks to fundamental management issues, perhaps the most fundamental. Managers looking for new ideas on how to improve performance will find it very stimulating. I found my own thinking very much influenced by it." —John Roberts, professor of economics, strategic management, and international business, Stanford Business School

Managing Trade-Offs and Tensions Between Knowledge Management Initiatives and Expertise Development Practices
Managing Trade-Offs and Tensions Between Knowledge Management Initiatives and Expertise Development Practices

Author: Ilan Oshri

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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This article explores the trade-offs and tensions between knowledge management initiatives and expertise development practices. While studies of knowledge management and expertise development are abundant, there is no research that has addressed the inter-relationships between these two organizational practices. This article, therefore, addresses the following question: How does the introduction and implementation of a knowledge management initiative affect the development of engineer's expertise within a firm? An in-depth case study of a company introducing new practices to promote knowledge transfer between projects in a fast-changing project environment is analysed. Based on the findings, we conclude that the introduced knowledge transfer initiative has upset the past harmony between expertise development and knowledge management practices. Full paper available at https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1350507606060982.