The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World - Hardcover

Chakravorti, Bhaskar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157851780X ISBN 13: 9781578517800

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003

Synopsis

This work offers a theory for why some innovations take hold in the market and why others don't and explores the implications for strategy. It shows stategists how to position their innovation to win, even with successful competitors, and how to manage the risks in bringing an innovation to market.

About this title

Synopsis

Innovation's encounter with the market results in a game of both high risk and high stakes. Often its outcome defies common sense: superior new products flop, unlikely ideas become runaway hits, and - despite rapid technological advances and intense interconnectedness - change happens at a snail's pace. What really happens during this encounter? How can you increase your own odds on this complex game board?In "The Slow Pace of Fast Change", Bhaskar Chakravorti peels back the many factors that govern an innovation's penetration into interconnected markets - and offers a game plan for successfully steering innovations from the lab to the living room. Chakravorti explains the vagaries of market adoption by highlighting a paradox in the widely celebrated concept of network effects: while everyone loves a great idea, individuals will embrace it only if they believe others will too. In markets with strong interconnections among participants, this "equilibrium" slows adoption and protects the status quo - despite the innovation's clear superiority. To win, innovators must unravel this status quo equilibrium and replace it with one built around their own innovations.

The key is to imagine a desired plausible endgame, and work backward to orchestrate the network of individual choices to create conditions that make this outcome happen.Drawing on Chakravorti's hands-on experience with many of the best-known innovating companies and insights gleaned from his expertise in the practical applications of game theory, this playbook offers go-to-market strategies for: qualifying endgames to guide current choices, selectively enabling "influencers" to propagate the innovation across the network, closing deals with influencers that are "win-win," and judging the nature of uncertainty to decide how firmly to commit to the strategy. "The Slow Pace of Fast Change" shows how to leverage interconnected individual choices in ways that ensure your innovation will win when it meets the market.Bhaskar Chakravorti is Partner and Thought Leader at Monitor Group, the global strategy firm. He leads Monitor's practice advising the world's preeminent companies on growth strategies through the practical application of game theory.

About the Author

Bhaskar Chakravorti is a partner in the global strategy practice at Monitor Group in Cambridge, MA.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 157851780X
• ISBN 13: 9781578517800
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216