Transformation and innovation, 2 formulas, 8 books, at least 25 questions and lots of lessons

There is a lot of asymmetry in managing innovation and transformation. You need the loonshots to ensure the future (read “Loonshots“), but you also need to keep the day to day routine of making money while one of the loonshots pay off. Managing both streams in the business is difficult. And there is no quick fix.

Dual transformation

“Zone to win” suggests you have to manage three time-horizons. “The day after tomorrow” suggests you should manage it as solid, fluid and superfluid and “Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future” suggest you manage two streams transformation A and transformation B.

Winter is coming

The argument is that it not only about innovation but ongoing transformation. That winter is coming. It isn’t only winter, that’s coming to your boardroom. It is also disruption. Disruption is coming. And it is coming at an unprecedented pace and scale. Kodak’s digital disruption took almost forty years to fully play out. Newspapers had about a dozen years of life after the internet shock. Nokia and RIM had only five years before great businesses painfully built over decades were ripped apart. And thus the innovator’s clock accelerates.