Beyond the Idea

Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling authors of Reverse Innovation and How Stella Saved the Farm distill more than a decade of exclusive research into one short, powerful, action-oriented book. Companies stumble when they imagine that innovation is mostly about ideas. The reality is that ideas are only beginnings. Indeed, even a company with the world's best idea still faces a devilish challenge: it must build the business of tomorrow without endangering the business of today. Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble are the world's leading authorities on the successful management of innovation. In Beyond the Idea, they distill more than a decade of research and insight into a practical, accessible, read-at-one-sitting handbook that offers invaluable guidance for anyone charged with making innovation happen: executives, managers, consultants, project leaders, and teams. By offering specific action steps, Beyond the Idea extends the elegant conceptual insights from How Stella Saved the Farm, Govindarajan and Trimble's parable. Beyond the Idea shows exactly how to: - Build a team with a very particular structure, one that makes it possible to simultaneously build something new and sustain what exists. - Manage any innovation initiative as a disciplined experiment. - Implement three distinct models for moving from ideas to action. Beyond the Idea is an essential book for any business that recognizes that innovation always has been, and always will be, the key to long term growth and vitality.