Book Description
One of the world''s preeminent business thinkers and co-author of
the bestseller, Competing for the Future, Gary Hamel helped set the
management agenda for the 1990s. He now brings us into the
twenty-first century with Leading the Revolution, which spent time
on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and
Business Week bestseller lists, among others. In his new book, Gary
Hamel lays out an innovative action plan for any company or
individual intent on becoming-and staying-an industry
revolutionary, for years to come. By drawing on the success of
"gray haired revolutionaries" like Charles Schwab, Virgin, and GE
Capital-companies who are always thinking ahead of the game and
growing in new directions-and profiling individuals such as Ken
Kutaragi, one of the pioneers of Sony Playstation, Hamel explains
how companies can continue to grow, innovate, and achieve success,
even in a chaotic world market. With insight culled from years of
experience, Hamel:
* Explores where revolutionary new business concepts come
from
* Identifies the key design criteria for building companies that
are activist-friendly and revolution-ready
* Shows how to avoid becoming "one-vision wonders"
* Demonstrates how to harness the imagination of every
employee
* Explains how to develop new financial measures that focus on
creating new wealth
Packed with practical advice, Leading the Revolution is an
accessible read, perfect for both businesses and individuals that
don''t want to get caught in the slow lane in the race for success
in the twenty-first century.
Amazon.com
So much for the old economy, new economy divide. According to
Gary Hamel, the professor-turned-strategy-guru author of Leading
the Revolution, complacent establishment giants and one-strategy
start-ups are on the same side of the fence--the wrong side.
Corporate complacency and single-strategy business plans leave no
room for what Hamel describes as the key to thriving in today''s
world of business: a deeply embedded capability for continual,
radical innovation.
Leading the Revolution is not a calm analysis of what will or
won''t work in a post-industrial world. Instead, it''s an impassioned
call for revolutionary activists to shake the foundations of their
companies'' beliefs and move from a linear age of getting better,
smarter, and faster, to a nonlinear age of becoming different.
While in the past incremental improvements in products and services
were accepted as good enough, Hamel shows that true innovation is
the demolition and re-creation of an entire business concept. He
blows apart the popular myth that innovation lies solely in the
hands of dot.com dynamos like AOL and Amazon by scrutinizing the
examples of such "gray-haired revolutionaries" as Enron and Charles
Schwab, companies that have managed to reinvent both themselves and
their entire industries, time and again.
After an in-depth examination of what business-concept innovation
involves for starters, it''s "based on avoidance, not attack",
Hamel goes on to motivate his readers to see their own
revolutionary future, and train them in the art of being an
activist. As he puts it in various headings, be a novelty addict,
be a heretic, know what''s not changing, surface the dogmas. And
then get out there and transform your ideas into reality. Not
simply a round-up call, Hamel''s book provides would-be activists
with an intelligent, comprehensive plan of action. He illustrates
each imperative with examples of real-life corporate rebels, such
as John Patrick and David Grossman at IBM, Ken Kutaragi at Sony,
and Georges Dupont-Roc at Shell. His message is the same to "old"
and "new" companies alike: "Industry revolutionaries are like a
missile up the tail pipe. Boom! You''re irrelevant!" So join the
revolution and avoid the explosion.
Hamel writes in a clear and compelling voice, preaching with
passion but supporting what he says with detailed, experiential
evidence. Each chapter is packed with probing questions and
inspirational examples that aim to dig through the apathetic
corners of your mind and throw hand grenades into any creative
synapses still slumbering. Even the alternative read innovative
design of Leading the Revolution will jolt you into a new level of
awareness and imagination. Indeed, the only problem you might have
with this book is an increasing desire to put it down before the
end, get out there into the wild world of the activist, and start
living the revolution.
--S. Ketchum
From Publishers Weekly
Hamel''s first edition of this volume, published in 2000, urged
managers help lead a business revolution by embracing
change-developing e-commerce, participating in joint ventures and
engaging in selective cooperation. Centuries of incremental
progress have given way to a time of revolution, Hamel argued, and
companies must change or die. His revised version keeps the focus
on far-reaching innovation-imagine the kind of future you want for
your company, Hamel urges, and then go out and create it-but he
makes sure to dismiss the "helium" of the dot-com bubble and focus
on meaningful business change. He highlights Cemex, the third
largest cement company in the world, as proof that "new attitudes
and new values can change an old industry"; UPS, too, gets the nod
as another "gray-haired revolutionary." Unsurprisingly, Hamel''s
positive Enron profile from the earlier edition gets the axe.
Hamel''s presentation is powerful and his core argument that
corporate leaders must be more entrepreneurial remains convincing;
the worst that can be said about this volume is that, by rehashing
his earlier writings, Hamel may not be fully following his own
advice.
From The Industry Standard
In 1994, IBM was a basket case. It had lost $15 billion over
three years and watched its market capitalization drop by 70
percent, eliminating $73 billion of shareholder wealth. That was
when a maverick named David Grossman emerged from an IBM outpost in
Ithaca, N.Y., with the radical idea that IBM should become an
Internet-savvy information services company.
What followed was a remarkable guerrilla campaign to transform
one of the world''s largest companies. With the help of a
sympathetic senior executive named John Patrick, as well as an
underground network of far-flung Net-freaks throughout the IBM
empire, Grossman overcame the odds and succeeded, helping to turn
around IBM through his iconoclastic efforts.
Gary Hamel wants you to do the same thing. He doesn''t care if you
work for Cisco Systems in Silicon Valley or a Rust Belt widget
maker in Youngstown, Ohio. If your work seems dumb, if your company
seems brain-dead, if most of your waking hours aren''t filled with
the ardent pursuit of radical innovation, Hamel wants you to start
fomenting revolutionary change to save your employer from the long,
grim twilight of obsolescence. He wants you to think big thoughts,
take chances and, most of all, care passionately about how it all
turns out.
Hamel''s new book, Leading the Revolution, purports to be a kind
of Rules for Radicals, a once-fashionable work by the late Saul
Alinsky. But instead of empowering society''s downtrodden, Hamel
wants to convince you that you already have the power to pursue
"business concept innovation" of the kind that turns industries -
and possibly even societies - upside down.
At this point sensitive readers may feel as if they''ve wandered
into Charles Saxon''s famous 1972 New Yorker cartoon about a party.
"Steer clear of that one," one woman cautions another about a man
across the room. "Every day is always the first day of the rest of
his life."
Corporations, after all, do not typically welcome borderline
insubordinate campaigns by low-level employees to radically alter
the direction of their business. Media critic Ben Bagdikian might
have been talking about the difficulty of drastic, bottom-up
innovation at most large companies when he said: "Trying to be a
first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like
trying to play Bach''s St. Matthew Passion on a ukulele."
Aside from the inherent improbability of his argument, Hamel has
a couple of other things going against him. For instance, he''s
annoyingly impressed with himself, as is evident from the book''s
self-dramatizing preface. And he''s a management guru by profession
his last book was Competing for the Future, which to some readers
will make him seem something of a charlatan by definition. Full
disclosure: As a species, these guys drive me up a wall. If they
really know so much, why haven''t they started a few
multibillion-dollar companies instead of preying on the insecurity
of executives willing to drop a few bucks on the latest management
fad? These guys are always full of noisy brio as they lay bare the
gross stupidity of corporate America, yet somehow the same
corporate idiots who are staples of every consultant''s books and
videotapes have managed to create the largest, richest, most
innovative economy in the history of the world. What an amazing
paradox!
All that said, I''ve got to confess that I liked this book, and
you probably will, too. I liked it for the same reason I like
churches and synagogues: Because it''s not that often, in this
indulgent and therapeutic culture of ours, that we are called upon
to be better than ourselves, and with admirable fervor this is
precisely what Hamel does. Indeed, the single best thing about
Leading the Revolution is its radical argument that work should be
engaging, meaningful and passionately performed, and that the way
to accomplish this is not by taking pride in some minute increase
in efficiency but by coming up with radical innovation - in other
words, by being really, really creative.
Fortunately, Hamel goes beyond mere exhortation to offer a
blueprint for how to revolutionize your company, even if it means
cannibalizing an existing business.
First you need an idea, and some of his suggestions for
developing these are obvious: Read new magazines, meet new people,
visit new places. Yet it''s equally obvious how few people follow
them. The point is to find and exploit giant social
discontinuities, such as the refusal of baby boomers to grow old
which has created markets for oversize tennis rackets, parabolic
skis and other never-say-die products. Hamel emphasizes both
direct experience and deep study: Go and see how other people live,
but make sure you get beyond first impressions. And distinguish
form from function: Banking, for instance, may be essential, but
banks aren''t.
The goal is "not to speculate on what might happen, but to
imagine what you can make happen," and along these lines Hamel
offers a section called "How to Build an Insurrection." First you
need a point of view, the equivalent of an ideology, but it must be
"credible, coherent, compelling and commercial." Then write a
manifesto, create a coalition, pick your shots, co-opt and
neutralize opposition, find a "translator" to bridge the gap
between revolutionaries and establishment, start building small
victories, and stay underground long enough to build critical mass
- but then be sure to infiltrate rather than overthrow the
highest levels of the organization to win the resources you''ll need
to realize your vision. If you''re in senior management, don''t feel
left out; Hamel suggests ways to make your company
revolution-ready.
Leading the Revolution offers a wealth of stories along the way
about people and companies who managed to create the kinds of
revolution the author is calling for. And although he gives too
little credit to the people in white lab coats, he''s basically
right that a lot of wealth has been created by the Gap, General
Electric, Starbucks, Wal-Mart and other companies whose
earth-shaking innovations--people will pay $4 for a cup of
coffee!--did not require an engineering degree. In one of his best
examples, the brainstorm of a twentysomething Enron employee in
England quickly led the company in a whole new direction. "Enron
went live in November 1999 with one of the first online markets for
all forms of energy," Hamel writes. "Just months after its launch,
EnronOnline was doing a dollar volume far greater than Internet
stars like Dell Computer, Cisco or Amazon."
Or consider Ken Kutaragi, an obscure Sony researcher who almost
single-handedly got his company to come out with a videogame system
in 1994. "Less than five years later," Hamel writes, "the
PlayStation business had grown to comprise 12 percent of Sony''s $57
billion in total revenues, and an incredible 40 percent of its $3
billion in operating profits."
Hamel''s examples show that, when the planets are aligned right,
it really is possible to bring about revolution inside a company.
That doesn''t mean it''s possible for all of us, or even most of us.
But I agree that in the absence of passion and creativity, work is
mere drudgery, and Hamel makes a strong case that bringing fresh
thinking to the job can produce wealth as well as satisfaction - no
surprise to those directly involved in the Internet
revolution.
Perhaps, though, the ultimate message of Hamel''s book is that in
business the phrase "after the revolution" no longer has meaning,
ironic or otherwise, since the revolution he''s talking about is one
without end.
From Booklist
For the past five years, Hamel has been the biggest name in
management gurudom. He and his consulting firm Strategos are
regularly profiled in the business press, and his articles
frequently appear in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Harvard
Business Review. Competing for the Future, which Hamel cowrote with
C. K. Prahalad in 1994, won numerous accolades and is still an
influential, often-cited work. Strategy is Hamel''s mantra. He
argues that companies must continuously reevaluate, update, and
redefine their core strategies. IKEA, Home Depot, Charles Schwab,
and Cisco are some of the "insurgents" leading Hamel''s revolution,
tipping over such stolid icons as Kodak, K-mart, Compaq, and
Westinghouse. Hamel even maintains Nike is on shaky ground. It is
not enough, he warns, to start new businesses or develop new
products. Victors in the revolution must invent new ways of doing
business. Attempting to validate his own "revolutionary"
credentials, Hamel has re-created--or at least repackaged--the
business book, this one coming with jazzy illustrations and
four-color graphics; and it will be heavily promoted.
David Rouse
From AudioFile
To keep up with the competition, think of your business as being
in an ecological relationship with its customers, suppliers,
business partners, and competition, and then keep an eye on the
dynamics of what happens in those relationships. The author uses
clear, pithy language there are many memorable sound bites and
well-spaced Socratic questions to spell out his ideas and push you
into action. With the abstract thinking of an academician and the
quick intuition of a start-up CEO, the author gives so many rich
ideas and cool sentences that you''ll want to rewind to enjoy them
again. The importance of this material will make you wish for an
unabridged audio or the print edition, just so you don''t miss
anything. T.W.
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