In Good Company - Innosight and IBM

Seizing the White Space is a new book being launched by HBS Press (and being pre-sold on Amazon.com.)  I'm very glad to read about others who are taking up the message of Create Marketplace Disruption - which first published the critical role of White Space in successfully managing any business (published in 2008 by Financial Times Press and also available on Amazon.com). 

The author, Mark Johnson, is Chairman of Innosight, a consulting firm he co-founded with Clayton Christenson who's on the Harvard Business School faculty (and author of The Innovator's Dilemma also on Amazon.com).  Innosight primarily focuses on consulting businesses to identify Disruptive innovations.  Now the Chairman is starting to realize that implementation is as important as identifying the implementation - and he's linked it to WHITE SPACE.  Great!!!

You can read his insights to how IBM and some of his other large clients have used White Space in an Harvard Business Publishinng Blog "Is Your Company Brave Enough For Business Model Innovation?" You'll quickly see that he applies The Disruptive Opportunity Matrix from chapter 10 of Create Marketplace Disruption - which is how companies have been shown to reach new businesses using White Space.  It's so gratifying to read somebody else who's applied your research and come to the same conclusions!

I'm looking forward to the book.  Readers please let me know what you think of the author's blog post - and the book when it comes out.

Post-script to yesterday's blog about the CEO of GM:

"Cat's Owens, Deere's Lane on short list of CEO candidates" is the AP article appearing on Crain's Chicago Business about the search for a new leader at GM.  As I predicted yesterday, recruiters seem to think the ideal candidate for the job needs to be from another big industrial company.  And preferably, an auto company "to understand the industry complexities."  Not only is there no incentive for these highly paid executives to take a similar job, at a lot less pay, in a government funded organization --- but investors shouldn't want it!  GM needs change.  And more change than trying to make GM into John Deere, or CAT.

John Deere has had weak results for decades.  The company has been wedged between other equipment manufacturers so badly that most of its profits now come from yard tractors homeowner's buy from Home Depot.  Just because the company is big, and one of the few left making equipment for which there is declining demand, is no reason to want the CEO at a turnaround like GM.  Likewise, CAT is under intense competition from Komatsu, Volvo and other manufacturers who are squeezing it from all sides - jeapardizing revenues and profits.  Only acquistions have kept CAT growing the last 10 years, and margins have plummeted.  That leadership is not what's needed at GM either.

When will somebody speak up for the investors and start a search in the right direction?  GM needs leadership that thinks entirely differently.  Unwilling to accept old-fashioned industrial notions about how to lead a company.  Like I recommended, go somewhere entirely different.  Maybe recruit somebody from Dell or HP or Cisco that understands rapid design cycles.  Or someone from Wal-Mart or Target that understands how to sell things - cheaply.  Or someone from Oracle or Mozilla or Google that understands the value of software - and that the product is a lot more than the iron - so you can capture the right value.  It's so disappointing to read how the "recruiting industry" is just as Locked-in as GM. 

If one of you readers knows somebody on the GM Board, maybe you should send them this blog (and yesterday's) to see if they can consider searching in the right place for new leadership!

Don't miss the recent ebook, "The Fall of GM"  for a quick read on how easily any company (even the nation's largest employer) can be easily upset by market shifts.  And learn what GM could have done to avoid bankruptcy - lessons that can help your business grow! http://tinyurl.com/mp5lrm

Comments

[Rodney Johnson]

Adam, in this I guess that lock-in begins at the creation of the job description which goes to the Board of Directors, which is likely based on the description from their predecessor and their predecessor... Great that you're out there challenging it.