Named one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine.

From the greatest minds in business today comes a groundbreaking new blueprint for executing the next stage of customer-created value. C.K. Prahalad, the world's premier business thinker, and IT scholar M.S. Krishnan unveil the critical missing link in connecting strategy to execution--building organizational capabilities that allow companies to achieve and sustain continuous change and innovation.

The New Age of Innovation reveals that the key to creating value and the future growth of every business depends on accessing a global network of resources to co-create unique experiences with customers, one at a time. To achieve this, CEOs, executives, and managers at every level must transform their business processes, technical systems, and supply chain management, implementing key social and technological infrastructure requirements to create an ongoing innovation advantage.

In this landmark work, Prahalad and Krishnan explain how to accomplish this shift--one where IT and the management architecture form the corporation's fundamental foundation. This book provides strategies for

• Redesigning systems to co-create value with customers and connect all parts of a firm to this process.

• Measuring individual behavior through smart analytics.

• Ceaselessly improving the flexibility and efficiency in all customer-facing and back-end processes.

• Treating all involved individuals--customers, employees, investors, suppliers--as unique.

• Working across cultures and time-zones in a seamless global network.

• Building teams that are capable of providing high-quality, low-cost solutions rapidly.

To successfully compete on the battlefields of 21st-century business, companies must reinvent their processes and culture in order to sustain innovative solutions. The New Age of Innovation is a complete program for achieving this transformation to meet the needs of the end consumer of the future.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 14 Ratings

Smart authors, thoughtful book, but - 2008-10-03
Reviewer Rating:
The New Age of Innovation is divided into an Introduction and eight chapters. The Introduction will tell you how the authors came to write the book and how their key ideas of N = 1 and R = G were developed.

The Transformation of Business is the authors' description of how business is moving toward a focus on the individual customer experience and drawing resources from everywhere.

Chapter two discusses Business Processes as the way a company can gain competitive advantage by reconfiguring resources in real time. There are many examples here, but not much guidance on what it means for you.

The Analytics chapter calls for sophisticated systems that can mine every scrap of data, identify trends, and reveal opportunities. The emphasis is on mining internal information but the part about R = G seems to have gotten lost. There's virtually no discussion of outside data sources or collaborators.

IT Matters is about the technical architecture for innovation. It is primarily a wish list about what IT ought to do. This could easily be converted into a checklist for system capability if you're considering changes in your IT systems.

Chapter five, Organizational Legacies, is about how companies have cultures and values and those cultures and values need to change if the business is going to change successfully. The main illustration in this chapter is the first Indian firms to offer outsourcing. The authors don't seem to know about the second wave of outsourcing firms, mostly founded after 2000 who are modeling their business plans on what to do differently than their predecessors.

This was the most disappointing chapter of the book for me. There were lots of neat diagrams and lots of pronouncements but there didn't seem to be much understanding of how very hard it is to change a company's culture. The entire process is treated as similar to changing the operating system in an IT department, technically difficult perhaps, but nothing some good planning and dedicated engineers can't handle.

The chapter on Efficiency and Flexibility highlights a challenge that every company that has ever tried to be both nimble and efficient has faced. There is a distinct tension between the two and it is often not resolvable. The chapter also discusses problems moving from the old way to the new way.

Chapter seven, Dynamic Reconfiguration of Talent, makes the point that you need to treat employees and vendors as unique individuals. The examples are good, but firmly rooted in IT. You won't find much here about companies designed for innovation, like WL Gore or who revamped their innovation model around business practices like Proctor & Gamble.

The final chapter, An Agenda for Managers, promises that the author's model is the one that will be the basis for innovation and value creation. For me, this was a mixed bag of a chapter. There's good advice like "learn by doing, take small steps." But then there's a twelve step agenda that offers gloriously non-specific advice like you might get from a fortune cookie. Example: "A long-term focus with short-term actions is the essence of organizational transformation."

Read this book if you want a deep, thoughtful discussion of some major trends in business. There are many statements and examples that will get you to stop and think.

Don't be surprised if a lot of what you read seems familiar. N = 1 echoes what Peppers and Rogers covered in One-to-One Marketing. R = G sounds a lot like "The World is Flat." This is an informed rumination by a couple of very smart men about how the world of business is changing

When you are done you will have stretched your thinking. You will ponder how the world is changing and how smart the authors of the book are.

Those are not bad outcomes. But they aren't practical ones, either.

A Little Too Technical, But Informative - 2009-04-02
Reviewer Rating:
I am reviewing The New Age of Innovation by C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan for a class on social media that I am taking at Harvard University.

This book, which is written by a man labeled "The #1 most influential management thinker in the world," was a little too technical at times for my personal interest. Based on the two notions that "Value is based on unique, personalized experiences of consumers" and "No firm is big enough in scope and size to satisfy the experiences of one consumer at a time," the book analyzes the changes in the business landscape that are currently taking place in the global marketplace.

The focus of the book was primarily on how large corporations must adapt to the global climate, by providing the best value through utilizing the best possible resources. The focus on large companies with massive resources, such as Wal-Mart and Amazon.com, made it difficult for me relate to since I work in a much smaller business market. The examples, such as mobilizing top talent overseas to most effectively operate in corporations, were insightful but very loosely relates to the everyday business operations of most companies.

I found the chapter on analytics to be quite informative since analytics are what help drive a business to adapt by identifying what works and what doesn't. This especially rings true for companies with global reach and influence. Prahalad states that strategy needs to drive analytics, and in return the analytics help to forecast "likely behaviors." He argues that blogs and forums are a great way to get insights. This somewhat states the obvious since the Internet is the key driver in the globalization of business, but still rings true. The Internet provides many measuring sticks for businesses to analyze and respond to, and if done properly, innovate and adapt to the needs of customers.

The final chapter, which served as "An agenda for managers," also provided some great insights on ways that business leaders can utilize resources such as social networks in connecting with customers. He makes the point that the lines between "public" and "private" are vanishing (if they already haven't). Through accepting and embracing such technology can only better a business, as long as the right effort has been put into it and it is done right.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is trying to better grasp the fact the world is shrinking by the second. The book emphasizes it is absolutely imperative to embrace and adapt to the global climate for corporations to have continued success. But the good news is that the resources are there to help get the job done.

Excellent and informative - 2008-10-12
Reviewer Rating:
This is a great book - it brings together a whole host of ideas into one thread which paints a realistic and insightful picture of the modern world around us. Lots of real world examples and easy to understand. Highly recommended.

Straight to the point, but ... - 2009-03-18
Reviewer Rating:
C.K. Prahalad is really a great thinker and his models on cocreated experiences are straight to the point. The focus on strategic thinking is great.

My comment is actually not only to Prahalad, but more in general to all strategy literature. As a founder of growth company I have seen plenty of strategies, but not so much first in hand execution and strategy implementation literature.

Of course the execution is entrepreneurs or managers task - not strategy writers. I would say that readers of Prahalad might enjoy bit more practicality.

All in all The Age of Innovation really is a footprint book (as Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid etc.)

Mikko-Pekka/ Idean

The technological drive toward globalization - 2009-01-28
Reviewer Rating:
The co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, is credited with developing the concept in the mid-1960's that the computing power of microprocessors would double ever 24 months - so far it's held true. Subsequently, this concept has been dubbed "Moore's Law" and it's been credited with the rapid acceleration of technology during the past decade or so. For many companies, the rolling technology juggernaut has had unintended consequences that include redundant work flows and data streams; an unrelenting push to go global in pursuit of new market opportunities as well as meeting the ever-changing demands of an increasingly empowered end user. The New Age of Innovation provides a fresh perspective on this technologically-driven state of flux by conjuring up two new rules of business. First, customers want personalized "experiences" instead of the dated services and goods of the past. Second, organizations can only provide such experiences through their instant access of global resources at will, without the cost of ownership. Soundview recommends this book, because the authors compelling show how the oft-overlooked area of effective business process can be a lynchpin for strategy, operations and ultimately success.

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