Unleashing the Innovators: How Mature Companies Find New Life with Startups

by Jim Stengel, Tom Post

Today's established companies must find new ways to reignite their entrepreneurial DNA and jumpstart revenues--or risk losing their way. By working with startup companies, Jim Stengel, renowned consultant to Fortune 500 companies and the former global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble, says that legacy companies can renew themselves: by acquiring new technology and creating new business lines; relearning the need for speed; sparking innovation; and learning from failures.      
 
At P&G, Stengel saw the importance of establishing partnerships with the startup world in order to learn how to better innovate. Relying on extensive interviews with innovation leaders at enterprise companies and startups, Stengel’s Unleashing the Innovators takes readers inside such storied companies as GE and Wells Fargo, IBM and Target, Motorola Solutions and Toyota to see what they are learning from their alliances with entrepreneurs. Stengel also explores how even 20- and 30-year-old "startups" like Amazon, Google, and Facebook can reinvent themselves--and what managers at legacy companies everywhere can learn from them.

Drawing on a specially commissioned global study of over 200 established corporations and startups, conducted by research consultancy OgilvyRED, Stengel found that companies with successful startup partnerships are three times more likely to change their culture to be more innovative.
Filled with indepth stories from the front lines of today’s most forward-looking companies, Unleashing the Innovators shows how companies of all sizes can better navigate today’s changing landscape, accelerate innovation, increase revenues, and improve their customer relationships.

Genres: Business, Management

240 pages, Hardcover

Published September 5, 2017

Reviews

[Mike Jorgensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too little content spread way too thin. The premise is interesting, but this could have been done in a powerpoint. Accordingly, it makes for a boring slog of a read as very little new information emerges.

[Martin Romero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting history about how legacies companies are working with startups, nevertheless the material is relevant only for a very small audience. (upper management on legacy companies)

[Pablo María Fernández · Rating 2 out of 5]

Compré este libro a $800 en una librería de usados de Av. Corrientes. Me llamaron la atención la portada y el título. Por el precio no lo hojeé demasiado y pienso que de haberlo hecho lo hubiese dejado sobre el estante. El título (agregado en la traducción porque no existe en inglés) es “Innovadores que hacen historia” y me imaginé una reseña de biografías de los Da Vinci, Newton, Tesla, Elon Musk, etc. o algo por el estilo. Nada más lejos.

La idea fuerza del libro es sencilla: las grandes corporaciones anquilosadas por el paso del tiempo pueden rejuvenecer si se asocian de la manera correcta con las start-ups o empresas jóvenes. El lenguaje marketinero es el típico de este tipo de libros y no profundiza a nivel teórico ni tampoco en los resultados concretos: se lee más como esos casos de éxitos que se lucen en un sitio web para reforzar la venta de un producto más que un estudio a fondo que genere hallazgos significativos para compartir. Las casi 250 hojas dan una gran cantidad de ejemplos y casos con un abordaje más bien superficial y llamativamente -o no- en pocos años varios varios ya quedaron obsoletos. IBM Watson como el gran transformador, la gestión de Ginni Rometty que después terminó recurriendo a comprar Red Hat como un salvataje que tampoco funcionó o la gestión de Eric Ries en GE que tampoco tuvo un balance positivo son algunos ejemplos.

Mucho de lo que se comenta sirve más como herramienta de comunicación para posicionar a las marcas con un discurso de ser innovadoras que de acuerdos comerciales realmente virtuosos para ambos lados (de hecho en general las fusiones, adquisiciones y/o alianzas terminan quitando valor de ambos lados). Lo que más rescato son los títulos de las secciones de los últimos capítulos que hacen las veces de consejos cortitos y al pie y alguna que otra frase pero claramente a mi entender es una lectura que no vale la pena.

[Kym Hamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an entrepreneur looking to scale my business, this was a very relevant read for me and getting a look at what corporates are looking for in their start-up investment partners, the pitfalls of the poorly-matched and the conundrum of culture clash vs collaboration, was both educational and eye-opening. However, while I have read - and thoroughly enjoyed - Beth Comstock's book, Imagine it Forward, the downside of Stengel's book for me was being too 'GE weighted'. Great nuggets throughout though and it's gone back on the bookshelf for future reference. 4-stars

[Alejandro Rodríguez Vahos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diagnóstico general de los problemas que enfrentan corporativos al generar asociaciones con startups. La calidad desciende considerablemente después de la página 100 (muchísimo relleno, faltó editor). No está escrito de manera maravillosa ni mucho menos, pero tiene unos mensajes clave bien útiles para quienes trabajamos en esos asuntos.

[Zé Paulo · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book explores partnerships between startups and corporations that don’t necessarily require an M&A—where corporations may act as investors or simply as product partners, primarily from a cultural perspective and from the corporations POV.

Overall, it’s more of the same, featuring numerous interviews with corporate directors.

[Gerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another book preaching about the benefits of innovation of which there are quite a number.

Call me old fashioned but my understanding of innovation is a creative process resulting in New ideas products and procedures.

What I found is that large corporations preach innovation but what they mean is to strangle potential competitors at birth using g all of their might or another way is to buy them up strip them of potential competitive threats and or produce new products th a suit them and of course appropriate the new technology for themselves.

This is another of such books.

[Juan David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cuenta como funciona las funciones de grandes empresas con las empresas emergentes, claves para no fracasar.