Wharton@Work

May 2013 | 

Innovation Prowess: Leadership Strategies for Accelerating Growth

innovation-prowess

Did you ever wonder why:

  • Sony didn’t provide online music (instead of Apple)?
  • Nordstrom didn’t see sooner the possibility of selling shoes online (instead of Zappos)?
  • Microsoft didn’t launch an Internet-based advertising medium (instead of Google)?
  • Kodak didn’t sell a full line of digital cameras and photo printers (instead of Canon)?

“For all the veneration of innovators in the business and popular press,” notes Wharton marketing professor George Day, “few firms have a solid grasp of how to drive superior organic growth.” But, says Day, there are companies who consistently realize organic growth rates exceeding those of their rivals.

His new book, Innovation Prowess: Leadership Strategies for Accelerating Growth, the latest title in the Wharton Executive Essentials Series, helps senior management teams learn from these growth leaders, including IBM, Nike, American Express, Lego, and Amazon.

Day, who is faculty director of Wharton Executive Education’s Innovation for Growth: Strategies for Creating Value, has worked with clients such as General Electric, W.L. Gore & Associates, Medtronic, and Johnson & Johnson, helping them unlock the full growth potential of their firms. In Innovation Prowess he shares his strategies, processes, and methods that make up a comprehensive template for accelerating organic growth rate.

The book is an action-based guide to combining discipline in growth-seeking activities with an organizational ability to innovate. It outlines a three-step process and offers specific directions for implementation that can be used in firms of any size, in any industry. It will challenge your model and thinking about organic growth while providing a tested approach for exceeding current results.