The Bright Stuff: How Innovative People and Technology Can Make the Old Economy New - Hardcover

Meyer, Arnoud De; Dutta, Soumitra; Srivastava, Sandeep

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0273656481 ISBN 13: 9780273656487

Publisher: Financial Times Management, 2002

Synopsis

The real winners in the Internet age will be the old economy firms that seize the opportunities offered by the Internet and integrate its possibilities into their existing business. But how do you make a mammoth run like a gazelle? The Bright Stuff shares with you the secrets of successful innovation so that you can learn the skills and attitudes of the digital economy innovators.

About this title

About the Author

Arnoud De Meyer is the Akzo Nobel Fellow in Strategic Management and Dean of the Asia Campus at INSEAD. His research interests include international R&D strategy, manufacturing strategy and Internet-enabled innovation. He is the co-author of Benchmarking for Global Manufacturing (Business One Irwin, 1992).

Soumitra Dutta is the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of E-Business and Information Technology and Dean of Technology and E-Learning at INSEAD. His research interests include electronic commerce, Internet-based learning and process reengineering. His most recent publication is Embracing the Net: Get .Competitive (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2001).

Sandeep Srivastava is the co-founder and CEO of IYCWorld, an Application Service Provider in India. He has an MBA from INSEAD. Previously he was an IT entrepreneur and worked for IT companies in India and Saudi Arabia. He is the co-author of Embracing the Net:Get .Competitive (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2001).

From the Back Cover

The Internet hype is over! But there is no going back to business as usual.

The real winners in the Internet age will be the old economy firms that seize the opportunities offered by the Internet and integrate its possibilities into their existing business.

But how do you make a mammoth run like a gazelle? The Bright Stuff shares with you the secrets of successful innovation so that you can learn the skills and attitudes of the digital economy innovators.

From now on, innovation is going to be imperative not just for growth, but for survival. This book will show you how to integrate your hard-headed, established business capabilities with the of nimble-footed start-ups. This may seem like a tall order, but examples in this book such as GM, Charles Schwab, and Merrill Lynch prove that it can be done. This is the "bright stuff" - the potential of the Internet waiting to be explored and exploited by you!

Companies need to think fast and think fresh. They need The Bright Stuff.

All industries are changing dramatically. Innovation is now critical for survival. Incumbent leaders are fighting back to retain their positions in the emerging marketplace - they are becoming innovative.

The Bright Stuff lays out the framework and action agenda for Internet-enabled innovation in your business. With this book you can create business models that exploit the true potential of the technologies available.

You will learn from detailed research carried out by INSEAD's eLab, looking at how traditional businesses were attacked by more innovative start-ups and how they have fought back. Detailed case studies of GM, Auto-by-Tel, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Wal-Mart, Charles Schwab, E*TRADE, and Merrill Lynch give sound evidence of how you can take advantage of The Bright Stuff.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

The millennium year indeed turned out to be a watershed year in more ways than one. For instance, the record-breaking "non-inflationary" growth of the US economy took a beating. Similarly, the post-hotmail frenzy around the Internet was definitely doused cold with a matching degree of untouchability for the "dotcoms." To the majority of managers in incumbent companies, the "failure" of the Internet-sponsored onslaught was music to their ears-it was the first sign that the online business "bubble" had burst. Many thought they were right again-the Internet was too esoteric to be applied to their "real" businesses. Most dotcoms have burnt away and even the mighty online leaders such as Yahoo! Are on the brink of trouble. What next? Is the Internet a non-starter?

This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, we think that the hallmark of the first year of the millennium was indeed in making us see the true colours of the Internet. The writing on the wall is written large, bold and clear—the Internet is a far more serious discontinuity than any time in the past. A scramble is on to start all over again. And sooner than we think, "Embracing the Net" is now dawning as an unmitigated imperative and opportunity to all incumbents. All industries that we studied, for example—retail, stock brokerage and automobile-are changing dramatically. Innovation is becoming critical for survival. Further, the nature of innovation is changing. And in all sectors, incumbents are belatedly but surely fighting back to retain their leading positions in the emerging marketplace-sometimes by simply buying up their innovative challengers, the entrepreneurial dotcom startups who are now strapped for cash.

Our research on incumbents around the world shows that most have yet to enhance their competitive advantage using the Internet. A large majority is simply using the Internet as a publishing medium or is satisfied with moving existing business models onto the new channel. Few are creating innovative business models that exploit the true potential of the new technologies. What is going wrong? What else should the incumbents be doing? We begin our exploration of innovation on this theme.

An in-depth analysis of three sets of case studies clearly throws up the new imperative—"Innovation as Strategy." The Internet and innovation seem to be two sides of the same coin. In fact, a small group of successful incumbents have made "innovation as strategy" the centre stage of their corporate strategy. The Internet has made possible a uniquely new strategic anchor for these companies—innovation as an end in itself. The book takes a walk through this bright, innovative stuff.

We ask the following questions: is what we have observed with the dotcoms really unprecedented? Have similar things happened before in business historty? By most reckonings, between 1895 and 1905 putting "Motors" in your company's name immediately increased the attractiveness of your company to investors. Though almost all of the "Motor" companies vanished quickly, motorcars redefined distances and time. This it is not the first time that we are confronted with a major disruption in the technology. There are some important lessons from the past to be adapted for today and some new imperatives for innovation in the digital era. We base our action agenda upon such lessons.

The new organizational frontier is the "Real Virtual Corporation"—corporations which are able to leverage the innovative power of the Internet and associated technologies to enhance customer relationships to create value, manage integrated supply chains to improve the efficiency of all players and empower their employees to be more productive and innovative. It is about using the power of the virtual to innovate and enhance the real! The Internet is pushing a growing amount of intelligence onto the communication infrastructure and that will have a significant impact on how we produce, deliver, and service. This book lays out the framework and action agenda for Internet-enabled innovation in incumbents.

From now on, innovation is going to be imperative for survival, not just growth. Innovation is going to be routine and the quantity of innovation will count no less than quality. The underlying tone of the book is that we are convinced that incumbents can be as nimble footed on innovation as start-ups. We appreciate that this may be a tall order for many incumbents but GE, IBM, GM, Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch and others prove that it can be done. This is the bright stuff. This is the potential of the Internet waiting to be explored and exploited by you!

We have deliberately kept the book simple, easy to read and as free of jargon as possible. We enjoyed our research into the bright stuff of the Internet and we hope you find the book insightful and useful in order to survive and grow in the midst of the vastly changed competitive dynamics. Good luck on your journey!

Edition details

• Publisher: Financial Times Management
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0273656481
• ISBN 13: 9780273656487
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 251