Best Business Books of 2003

I ran across an excellent review of the top 10 business books from 2003. One of my favorites is the review of three 2003-released books about innovation. Here are a few clips from the reviewer Randy Komisar.

"I tend to think of innovations as breakthrough ideas or game-changing technologies — like the Internet or genetic sequencing. On the other hand, I know there are many hardworking, successful businesspeople who consider new packaging for a breakfast cereal to be innovative. Merriam-Webster OnLine defines innovation as “the introduction of something new; a new idea, method, or device: novelty.” In the thesaurus, the first word that comes up for innovation is change. The combination seems like a good working definition to me: A new idea that effects change. Bigness or smallness is not important. With this definition in mind, I set out to see what the current batch of writers had to teach us about innovation.

Three of the books chosen explore innovation from an analytical perspective; each holds the view that networks are critical to innovation. In How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate (Harvard Business School Press, 2003), Andrew Hargadon sees a series of “small worlds” — seemingly distant, disconnected, and disparate populations or actions — that need to be bridged by technology brokers. Henry Chesbrough, in Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology (Harvard Business School Press, 2003), sees a diffusion of knowledge that needs to be knitted into innovative solutions, both inside and outside companies. In The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World (Harvard Business School Press, 2003), Bhaskar Chakravorti sees a network of constituencies that must coordinate if they wish to abandon the status quo they currently support and create a new environment where innovation may flourish."

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