Innovation

In today's constantly shifting marketplace, "innovation" has become the catchword of companies large and small. In The Innovation Premium, Ron Jonash and Tom Sommerlatte draw on years of research and experience to demonstrate -- for the first time -- that those companies that consistently achieve innovation leadership enjoy measurable advantages, including an average 15 percent increase in shareholder returns. Bridging the gap between the technological and organizational aspects of renovation, the authors show managers at all levels how to move beyond continuous improvement of products and processes to create the "Next Generation Enterprise", an organization that thrives on innovation and knows how to harness it to create and capture value, spark and speed growth, and achieve the highest standards of performance.

Attributes of culture and a nation's structure influence the degree and type of innovation achievable within a society. Routes exist for any nation, regardless of its structural or cultural elements, to achieve innovative success and economic development. Clear, concise prescriptions are given to enable managers and societies to determine those structural aspects of their nation that may need adjustment. Managers of international businesses, research and development, as well as researchers in the fields of strategic management, technology, and public policy, will find this comprehensive book on innovation a valuable asset.

This volume draws together major management theoreticians who examine the forces and factors that enhance or inhibit creative and innovative activities in large organizations in the private and public sectors. Examples are drawn from the United States and Japan as well as Eastern Europe and China.

-- Claude Barfield, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

This volume examines the role of scientific and technical information in the innovation process. The authors are primarily concerned with federally supported scientific and technical information which can be used to improve technology development for nondefense purposes--and thus help improve the international economic competitiveness of the United States. Their study is designed to first evaluate the ways in which this investment can be better used to improve our innovation capacity and then to assess the policy implications for the federal government and private sector R&D firms.

The slowdown of growth in Western industrialized nations in the last twenty years, along with the rise of Japan as a major economic and technological power (and enhanced technical sophistication of Taiwan, Korea, and other NICs) has led to what the authors believe to be a "techno-nationalism." This combines a strong belief that technological capabilities of a nation;s firms are a key source of their competitive process, with a belief that these capabilities are in a sense national, and can be built by national action. This book is about these national systems of technical innovation. The heart of the work contains studies of seventeen countries--from large market-oriented industrialized ones to several smaller high income ones, including a number of newly industrialized states as well. Clearly written, this work highlights institutions and mechanisms which support technical innovation, showing similarities, differences, and their sources across nations, making this work accessible to students as well as the scholars of innovation.

People in organizations often speak of innovation as if it were the ultimate new idea. This book argues that innovation is instead a new patterning of our experiences of being together.

In this age of high technology, Japan's success in continuous improvement and innovation in key industries, ranging from steel and automobiles to electronics, has been spectacular, and the unique institutional arrangements that have supported this success have attracted wide attention. Yet, with only a few exceptions, the discussion of Japan's innovation system has tended to be anecdotal. This book investigates Japan's current innovation system through empirical, mostly quantitative, research. The contributors, who are leading Japanese scholars on these subjects, reveal the rich and complex nature of the japanese innovation system, and describe in detail its strengths and weaknesses.

Japan has major problems to address if it wishes to remain an economic superstar in the 21st century. Can Japan continue to grow as an economic superpower now that it has caught up with the technological frontier by borrowing technology? Herbig explores the Japanese and American cultures, business practices, and government behavior in order to determine an optimum combination. After examining historical evidence of Japan's creativity, Herbig provides fresh insight into Japanese innovative strengths and weaknesses, and analyzes Japanese product development strategies and target costing. A comparison between U.S. and Japanese innovation processes shows how American thinking focuses excessively upon the earliest stages of the process. It also shows the advantages of imitation and application, as well as the risks involved in being a follower, even one as good as Japan. International managers and CEOs, business scholars and graduate students will find Herbig's insights into future scenarios for both Japan and America very valuable.