What's the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking - Hardcover

Thomas H. Davenport; Laurence Prusak; H. James Wilson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1578519314 ISBN 13: 9781578519316

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003

Synopsis

The secrets of successful idea practitioners change management. Reengineering. Knowledge management. Major new management ideas are thrown at today's companies with increasing frequency - and each comes with evangelizing gurus and eager-to-assist implementation consultants. Only a handful of these ideas will be a good fit for your organization. Choose the right idea at the right time and your company can become more efficient, more effective, and more innovative. Choose the wrong one - or jump on the right bandwagon too late - and your company could fall hopelessly behind. Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak say that some managers have found ways to improve their odds of success in the risky but essential game of idea management. In "What's the Big Idea?, they introduce a largely unsung class of managers they call - idea practitioners - individuals who do the real work of importing and implementing new ideas into businesses.While gurus reap most of the credit when big ideas take flight, Davenport and Prusak's research reveals that idea practitioners actually play the most important role: they turn the right ideas into action. Drawing from decades of consulting, academic, and business experience and from their novel study of more than 100 of these critical change leaders, "What's the Big Idea?" offers tools and frameworks for: assessing the merits of the top business gurus; scanning and tracking emerging ideas in the marketplace; distinguishing promising ideas from rhetoric; refining ideas to suit your organization's particular needs; packaging and selling the idea internally; and ensuring successful implementation.Davenport and Prusak prove that there are no faddish management ideas - only faddish ways of adopting them. Encouraging managers to embrace the power of ideas while avoiding the hype that often accompanies them, this pragmatic guide shows how passion and reason combine to build innovative companies.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"In engaging language and with many current examples, Davenport and Prusak offer a convincing explanation of how a handful of organizations are able to consistently derive commercial benefit from the good ideas of their own people and others. I consider What’s the Big Idea? to be a must-read, whether you are seeking to market your own ideas or to convert the ideas of others to competitive advantage."
—Steve Kerr, Managing Director and Chief Learning Officer, Goldman Sachs

"In this original and important book, Davenport and Prusak answer their own question: the big idea is how ideas and their creators have shaped the foundations of management practices over the past four or five decades. What’s the Big Idea? thoroughly covers the history and sociology of ideas that have made a huge difference in how business is practiced."
—Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, USC, and coauthor, Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders

"What's the Big Idea? is a brilliant guide to finding and implementing sound business ideas. Davenport and Prusak have uncovered fundamental truths about business knowledge that simply cannot be found elsewhere. This is a timeless and relentlessly useful book. If you want your company to keep getting better every day, buy this charming and well-written book, study it, and keep talking about it with your colleagues."
—Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford, author, Weird Ideas That Work, and coauthor, The Knowing-Doing Gap.

"Davenport and Prusak’s innovative analysis focuses not only on the critical ideas that change the course of business performance, but, more important, on the people and processes that transform ideas into results. In their fascinating description of ‘idea practitioners,’ they will help readers to attain that lofty status."
—Gary W. Loveman, President & CEO, Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.

About the Author:

Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Chair at Babson College and a research fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business. Laurence Prusak is the Director of IBM's Institute for Knowledge Management. Jim Wilson is an associate of the Institute for Strategic Change.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1578519314
• ISBN 13: 9781578519316
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256