Author Description

Here is a practical model for business leaders striving to innovate and succeed in today's competitive marketplace. But more than that, Utterback tells engaging tales of industry transformation throughout the decades - ranging from the birth of typewriters to the emergence of personal computers, from gas lamps to fluorescent lighting, from George Eastman's amateur photography to electronic imaging - capturing the personalities, the historical background, and the inspirational and instructive kernel in each. In this era of rapid technological development, understanding the dynamics of industrial innovation is essential to a company's survival and success. Indeed, business leaders must learn to harness the power of innovation to avoid being outpaced by competitors. In Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, Utterback explores the rich history of innovation by skillfully applying insights from the past to develop a framework for the present, illustrating how innovation enters an industry, how mainstream firms typically respond, and how new and old players wrestle for dominance. In developing this model, Utterback examines industries over long periods of time to discover patterns in the way innovation is introduced, adopted, and then replaced by yet further innovation. Utterback asserts that existing organizations must consistently embrace innovation, even when it appears to undermine traditional strengths. With the wisdom of hindsight, he challenges today's managers to abandon past successes and pursue a strategy of bold innovation, while continuously renewing technical core capabilities. Readers of this book will come away with a thorough understanding of how a dominant product design changes the basis of competition; how product technologies are displaced by successive waves of innovation; why most major innovations come from industry outsiders; how product and process innovations are linked; how established firms respond when a radical innovation invades a stable industry; and why many firms fail to successfully bridge generations of technology. Of interest not just to managers but also to social historians and others interested in science and technology developments, Mastering the Dynamics oflnnovation leaves readers not only with a deeper knowledge of the issues suruounding innovation, but also with a practical guide for implementing innovative strategies to ensure the success of their own companies.