book review
By Lindsay Risto
CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION: THE DNA OF SUSTAINED INNOVATION
BY GARY P. PISANO
PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2019
Innovation is at the heart of every great start-up. Think of any
big corporation today and they all have one thing in common:
They had a solution for a problem. When these companies and
the solutions they’ve created become household names, the
once small start-ups have a new problem, how to maintain the
energy of start-up while sustaining innovation? Companies may
have the capital and the people to sustain business, but without
the innovation – the new ideas that shake up industry – they won’t
be in business for long.
This is what Gary P. Pisano, a leading researcher in the fields
of innovation, strategy, manufacturing and competitiveness aims
to solve with his new book Creative Construction: The DNA of
Sustained Innovation. Pisano, the Harry E. Figgie Professor of
Business Administration at Harvard Business School, shatters
the belief that only small, disruptive start-ups can innovate and
invigorates established companies to once again believe that they
can grow organically through innovation instead of acquisition.
Pisano argues, “If larger enterprises seem incapable of transforma-tive
innovation, it is because we design them and run them to be
that way.”
Unlike living beings, like humans, who cannot alter their DNA
(at least for now), Pisano instructs readers to think of enterprise
as a living, growing, developing being; one that can transform its
DNA to better serve itself and those who depend on it. Combining
over three decades of research and personal experience with both
big companies and fast-growing start-ups, Pisano gives readers a
new way of thinking about how the scale of bigger companies can
be leveraged for an innovation advantage. Creative Construction
argues that companies can continue to innovate after the start-up
stage; they just need to be designed and run differently.
To keep an innovative edge, Pisano sets out three critical tasks
for any business: Develop strategies, design systems and build the
culture. Creative Construction is separated into three parts, each
part focuses on a task with three or four chapters breaking down
the task into manageable sections. The combination of research
and personal experience creates an engaging read that grounds the
theory in real-world practice, showing that it can be recreated.
Executives of any size company, in any stage of business will
have lots to think about after reading Creative Construction. Your
organization might be big, but that doesn’t mean that you have to
stick to that mould. Recreate your company’s DNA and you will
breathe a new life of sustained innovation. n
Public Affairs
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