Strategic Innovation: The Definitive Guide to Outlier Strategies

LEVERAGE STRATEGIC NOVELTY (SN) TO TRANSFORM AND DOMINATE YOUR MARKET

• Become an “outlier organization”: recognize huge opportunities in novelty, and act fast and first
• Listen for the tremors already building beneath your markets
• Learn from winning “outlier” business models, organizational forms, markets, products, and services

Today, the companies that rise rapidly to dominance are the outliers. They’re radically novel where it matters: whether in business models, products, services, or some other key driver of value. Strategic Innovation reveals how to think like these vanguard organizations–and become one of them.

You’ll discover how to borrow the lenses and insights of companies operating right at the edge of conventional industry dynamics and boundaries…where opportunities are underdefined, predictions unstable, and the greatest opportunities exist.

Using linked case studies and a proven three-step methodology, the authors guide you through uncovering Strategic Novelty (SN) with explosive potential…executing quickly… and learning and tweaking relentlessly to amplify your impact.

If you keep doing what everyone else is doing, you may succeed–but not greatly, and not for long. If you want to create, transform, and dominate your market, you need to think and act like an outlier. Learn how. Now. Before someone does it to you.

Right now, all around you, there’s an explosion of new business models, new product/service categories, and new organizational forms. It’s a veritable Cambrian Explosion of business life, led by outlier organizations you’ve never even heard of. Many will remain practically invisible to the incumbents in their markets…until they suddenly explode into dominance.

What do they share? A fundamental commitment to Strategic Novelty (SN). Now, in Strategic Innovation, leading innovation strategists Liisa Välikangas and Michael Gibbert show you how to leverage SN to become your industry’s winning disruptor.

You’ll master SN through case studies from leading outlier organizations in areas ranging from 3D printing to crowd financing and resource-constrained innovation. Each case is original, previously unpublished, and based at least in part on the authors’ direct experiences.

Through these cases, you’ll explore how each company’s story is playing out: sometimes in failure, but often in massive success. You’ll discover why incumbents rarely notice outliers in time, and how to keep it from happening to you. Perhaps most valuable of all, the authors help you extrapolate the likely impact of any novelty, so you can tell the difference between promising opportunities and those destined to fail.

The proven methodology for profiting from Strategic Novelty (SN)

Three steps + powerful tools to:

Identify the WOW

What excites you? Unsettles you? What does that mean? What does it say about you?

Execute the SO WHAT?

Choose and apply the strategic ideas most likely to enrich your organization

Amplify the OOMPH

Experiment, learn, and lead to maximize the impact of novelty

Liisa Välikangas is Professor of Innovation Management at Aalto University and Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki. She is on the board of various private and public organizations, including the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation and Robin Hood Minor Asset Management. She has been affiliated with Stanford University, London Business School, Keio University in Japan, and IMD in Switzerland, and worked for Strategos, a strategic management consultancy, and SRI International in Silicon Valley. Her research on innovation, strategy, and resilience has been published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Wall Street Journal, among other leading journals, and presented to various executive audiences. She is the author of The Resilient Organization, How Adaptive Cultures Thrive Even When Strategy Fails (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Liisa lives in Finland and California.

Michael Gibbert’s first encounter with strategic novelty and outliers was as an apprentice to a professional chef in a two- Michelin-star kitchen in Wiesbaden, Germany, in a (failed) attempt to get the third star. Intrigued by the theoretical underpinnings of novelty and outliers, he turned to the academe of business management, reading for a Masters at Stellenbosch, South Africa, and a PhD at St. Gallen University, Switzerland. After several research and teaching stints at INSEAD, Yale, and Bocconi, he joined the faculty at the Università della Svizzera italiana, in Lugano, Switzerland, where he is a professor of marketing. The author of several books and influential articles, his quest for strategic novelty happily received more accolades on the academic (compared to the culinary) front. He lives, cooks, and teaches in southern Switzerland.

Lakshmi B. Nair is a PhD student at Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland. She explores the methodological sophistication of research, with a predominant focus on qualitative methodology. Her work so far encompasses studies on rigor, transparency, and impact of research methodology. Before embracing the academic way of life, she was a banker (HDFC Bank Ltd.), an MBA (First Class, Mahatma Gandhi University), and a BSW (Rank Holder at Kerala state level, Mahatma Gandhi University). When she is not following outliers, she follows her other passions: cooking, reading, dancing, traveling, and talking (not necessarily in that order).

Markus Paukku is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Based in San Francisco, Markus studies novel organizational and business models in emerging markets and nascent industries. Currently he is investigating the reimagination of higher education through digital technology and online learning. Markus received his PhD from the Aalto University School of Business and has degrees from McGill University and the Helsinki School of Economics. His research has been published in International Business Review and is regularly presented at international academic conferences such as the Strategic Management Society.

Inês Peixoto is a doctoral candidate at Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. Along with looking into the strategies of outliers, Inês has a keen research interest in how nascent markets emerge and evolve, in particular the role of ambiguity and uncertainty in market rules and the transformative potential of innovative strategies. Currently, she is examining the European biofuels market, having presented her work in international conferences and seminars, including Strategic Management Society (SMS) and Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE). Originally from Lisbon in Portugal, Inês has degrees in environmental engineering and in management from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. When she is not peering into the novel, she enjoys exploring the old in music records, second-hand books, and film.

Akseli Virtanen is a theorist of new political finance, born in Finland and currently based in Santa Cruz, California. He is a co-founder of Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative, an activist hedge fund, which bends powers of finance to the production of the common and creation of new economic space. The financial services of the merry men and women of Sherwood are here again: only this time they log into the brains of the bankers at Wall Street to share their means of production with those who don’t normally have access to financial capital. Akseli is the author of Arbitrary Power: A Contribution Towards a Critique of Biopolitical Economy (n-1 Edições, forthcoming 2015).

Alice Taylor is the founder and CEO of MakieLab, a toys-and-games company in London and the creator of Makies, the world’s first 3D printed toy at retail. Alice was recently honored with two of the Hospital Club 100 prizes (Creative Entrepreneur category and Games/Tech category), and won the Rising Star Inventor of the Year at the Chicago Toy and Game Fair 2014. Previous to MakieLab, Alice was Commissioning Editor for Education at Channel 4, where she commissioned multiple award-winning games and media for kids and teens, winning awards that included two BAFTAs. Pre Channel 4, Alice was VP Digital Media at BBC Worldwide in Los Angeles.

Andrea Carugati is Associate Professor, Department of Management, Aarhus University, Denmark where he leads the Information System Research Group. Andrea’s research focuses on the strategic impact of technology on IT-driven organizational change, and on the deployment of information technology in organizations. Andrea has published, among others, in the European Journal of Information Systems, Database for Advances in Information Systems, European Management Review, European Management Journal, at the International Conference on Information Systems, EGOS, and at the European Conference on Information Systems.

Eri Gentry is President and co-founder of BioCurious, the first “hackerspace for biotech,” home to the 3D DIY BioPrinter printer project, and one of FastCompany’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Education. She is a researcher and resident Biofuturist at the Institute for the Future, co-author of the book Maker Pro, and past CEO and co-founder of Livly, a research company on a mission to end killer diseases. She was named a White House Champion of Change for Citizen Science and one of Techonomy’s Top Ten for 2013.

Eric Nowak is a Professor at the Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) and the University of Lugano (USI). His research on corporate governance, private equity, and IPOs was published in leading international journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Business Venturing, and Business History . Eric studied at the Universities of St. Gallen (HSG), Bocconi, and Chicago. He holds a PhD in finance from HSG and obtained his venia legendi in Betriebswirtschaftslehre from the Goethe University of Frankfurt. From 2010 to 2011 he served as the Rock Center for Corporate Governance Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He was the Swiss investigator for the EC Research Network Regional Comparative Advantage and Knowledge Based Entrepreneurship (RICAFE II). Eric has a wide range of practical experience and knowledge in entrepreneurship from start-up activities. Among the start-ups he has co-founded, he is in supervisory board of aktionaersforum AG, an online shareholder communication company, and member of the scientific board of CEPRES GmbH, a web-interfaced private equity data provider. He also is the founder, owner, and Chairman of the board of Swiss Rating Agency SA, Lugano, a USIincubated start-up active in credit risk analytics. Furthermore, he has worked on numerous consulting projects and in arbitration proceedings particularly for companies in the areas of private equity and event-driven hedge funds. Many of Eric’s former students have successfully founded companies under his guidance, among them Indian Energy Ltd. which did an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, CEPRES GmbH which was acquired by Deutsche Bank, and 2iqResearch which has been financed by the Swiss VC Next Generation Finance AG.

Giacomo Cattaneo is PhD fellow at the Department of Management, Aarhus University, Denmark, and Research Associate at the Chair of Entrepreneurship, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He holds an MSc in Management, Technology, and Economics from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Giacomo’s research focuses on the relationship between the processes of strategic renewal and innovation to explain why companies struggle in the face of volatile and dynamic environments.

Harikesh Nair is a Professor of Marketing at Stanford GSB. His research is in the area of marketing analytics. His work brings together applied economic theory and econometric tools with marketing data to better understand consumer behavior and to improve the strategic marketing decisions of firms. His recent research covers pricing, workplace analytics, quantitative incentive design, social media and social interactions, advertising, network effects, diffusion of technologies, and empirical industrial organization, especially in contexts in which marketing activities have dynamic implications for the behavior of consumers and firms. His research has been published in leading marketing journals including Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and written up in popular-press outlets like CNBC , The Economist , Financial Times , US News , and The Wall Street Journal. His research has been recognized with awards from the Quantitative Marketing and Economics Journal, the American Marketing Association Foundation, the Swiss Academy of Marketing Science, and the U.S. Council for University Transportation Centers. Harikesh received his PhD in Business from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. Prior to that, he received his MS in Transportation Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.Tech in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Madras, India. He has been at Stanford since 2005, and teaches classes on Data and Decisions, Pricing and Monetization in the Stanford MBA program; on empirical analysis of dynamic decision contexts in the GSB PhD program; and on Marketing and Pricing in the GSB executive education and custom education programs. Harikesh serves as an associate editor at Management Science and Quantitative Marketing and Economics. At the GSB, Harikesh was the Fletcher Jones Faculty Scholar from 2007 to 2008, the Spence Faculty Scholar from 2011 to 2012 and the Louise and Claude Rosenberg Faculty Scholar from 2009 to 2010 and 2012 to 2013. In 2014, Poets&Quants, a magazine focused on Business schools, voted him one of the 40 Most Outstanding B-School Profs Under 40 in the World.

Heraldo Negri de Oliveira is a Brazilian biologist and partner and a co-founder of BUG Agentes Biológicos where he is also the Director of Production. Prior to BUG, Heraldo worked at the Department of Entomology of Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture at the University of São Paulo (USP/ESALQ), Brazil. He also has an MBA in Agribusiness by USP/ESALQ. Heraldo has authored dozens of scientific papers and books in the area of biological control.

Lars Frederiksen is Professor (MSO) at Department of Management, Aarhus University, Denmark where he leads the Innovation Management Group. He was awarded his PhD from Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and hereafter worked for more than 4 years at Imperial College Business School, London. Lars specializes in the management of innovation and technology with particular emphasis on innovation strategies, knowledge creation and search, user innovation in communities, and innovation in project-based organizations. More recently Lars ventured into studying mobility of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams. Empirically, Lars focuses on industries such as software, roads and water, engineering consulting, and entertainment (i.e., music and films). Lars’ work appears in journals including Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Product Innovation Management, among others.

Liis Männamaa is an Implementation Manager with Nor1 developing the relationship with the main property contacts and supporting the implementation process of Nor1’s products into new and existing portfolio of hotels. Having experience in working with tourism and hospitality companies in various countries in Europe, she enjoys communicating with global hotel chains and analyzing the properties to recommend pricing strategies that maximize hotel room revenue. Liis received her Master’s degree in Economics and Communication, Major in International Tourism Management at Universita della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, and cannot imagine her life without traveling and experiencing new cultures around the world.

Mario Bellinzona oversees all activities for Nor1 in the EMEA region, supporting the company’s growing client base and partner marketing initiatives with a dedicated European Account Revenue Management, Support Analysis, and Business Development Team out of Nor1’s regional office in Frankfurt, Germany. Before joining Nor1 he held positions at Trust International as VP Global Sales and Marketing, Sr. Manager Strategic Initiatives, and Key Account Manager. Prior to Trust International he was Product Manager for electronic corporate booking solutions and Management Information Systems at Amadeus Germany, a provider of global travel technology and distribution solutions. He holds a Bachelor’s in Economics and Business Management with focus on Travel and Hospitality from the Department of Cooperative Studies, Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Michael Renard has more than 29 years of recognized, revenue-generating experience in commercial operation, business development, and sales and marketing for the life science industry. With Beckman Coulter, he held various positions in program management, business operations, and business development. He most recently was the Vice President of Marketing for North America commercial operations where he was responsible for achieving $2 billion in revenue across 11 major product lines. Before Beckman Coulter, he was Vice President and General Manager in a development-stage incubator division of Sanofi, Inc. and director of corporate accounts at Kallestad Diagnostics. Michael holds an MBA from Rockhurst University and a BA in Biology and Chemistry from St. Olaf College.

Milena Mend studied psychology and communication science at the University of Zurich (CH) before she started the Masters in Management, Organization, and Culture at the University of St. Gallen. She is particularly interested in how organizations evolve, establish, and disappear and how innovations change human working life.

Nicolai J. Foss is Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Copenhagen Business School, and holds part-time professorial positions at Warwick Business School and Norwegian School of Economics. His main research interests are the resource-based view, organizational economics and design, and strategic entrepreneurship. Nicolai’s work has been published in the main journals in management research. He is a member of the Academia Europaea.

Nozomi Umenai is director of marketing communications at Gengo, Inc., a global people-powered translation platform that enables everyone to read and publish across languages. Prior to Gengo, Nozomi was part of Tokyo-based PR agency BILCOM’s international department, where she was responsible for controlling and developing the public image of international clients such as Facebook and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. Nozomi then went on to join Wantedly, a social recruiting platform, where she worked as an internal PR representative helping plan and raise awareness to a Japanese audience. Nozomi holds a Bachelor of Arts in both Anthropology and Sociology, as well as a Masters in Visual Culture from New York University. Nozomi currently resides in Tokyo, Japan, and is fluent in both Japanese and English.

Pekka Salokannel is an international award-winning Industrial Designer from Finland whose passion lies in 3D printed product design. Upon graduating from Lahti Institute of Design, Pekka worked as a designer in Golla. In 2012 he joined Tinkercad, where he was responsible for educational content, and also worked together closely with Makerbot, Mozilla Festival, and 3D Printshow. In 2013 he founded Fabrigate, offering consultation, design, and educational services with clients such as Shapeways, Cubify, and Twikit. Pekka is an ambassador for 3D printing and has been a guest speaker, giving lectures and workshops in U.K., China, Russia, and Finland. He has his own brand Colors of Birch, a 3D printed eyewear and jewelry fashion brand which has been exhibited at Paris Fashion Week, Amsterdam, and Beijing. He is currently developing the brand Kokosom as one of the co-founders of this 3D printed custom eyewear company.

Tito Jankowski is one of six co-founders of BioCurious, a community biotech lab in Sunnyvale, California. He is a proponent of open source hardware, biotech hackerspaces, and synthetic biology. His work has been covered by the New York Times, Wired, Nature, and GQ France, and in Biopunk: Kitchen-Counter Scientists Hack the Software of Life (Marcus Wohlsen), Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (Chris Anderson), and “Maker Pro” by Maker Media. Contact him at tito@biocurious.org.

Tomi Laamanen is Chaired Professor of Strategic Management, Director of the Institute of Management, and Director of the PhD Program of Strategy of the University of St. Gallen. Before that Tomi was Professor of Strategic Management and Director of the Institute of Strategy at Aalto University (1997–2011). Tomi holds two D.Sc. degrees; one in Strategy and one in Finance. His research focuses on strategic management with a special emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, management cognition, strategy process, capability dynamics, and management’s cognition. Tomi is Associate Editor of the Strategic Management Journal and member of the Editorial Boards of Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Discovery, and Journal of Management. At the moment, Tomi chairs the Strategic Management SIG of Euram, the Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) division of the Academy of Management, and co-chairs the Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) of the Strategic Management Society and the Strategic Management Society Special Conference in St. Gallen, 2015. In addition, Tomi has actively worked with a number of firms in different roles as Chairman, Member of the Board, or consultant.