Leading the Revolution: How to
Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making
Innovation a Way of Life by Gary
Hamel
Fast Paced, Hard Hitting
So much for the old economy, new economy divide. According to Gary
Hamel, the professor-turned-strategy-guru author of Leading the
Revolution, complacent establishment giants and one-strategy start-ups
are on the same side of the fence--the wrong side. Corporate
complacency and single-strategy business plans leave no room for what
Hamel describes as the key to thriving in todays world of business: a
deeply embedded capability for continual, radical innovation. Leading the
Revolution is not a calm analysis of what will or wont work in a post-
industrial world. Instead, its an impassioned call for revolutionary activists
to shake the foundations of their companies beliefs and move from a
linear age of getting better, smarter, and faster, to a nonlinear age of

becoming different. While in the past incremental improvements in
products and services were accepted as good enough, Hamel shows that
true innovation is the demolition and re-creation of an entire business
concept. He blows apart the popular myth that innovation lies solely in the
hands of dot.com dynamos like AOL and Amazon by scrutinizing the
examples of such gray-haired revolutionaries as Enron and Charles
Schwab, companies that have managed to reinvent both themselves and
their entire industries, time and again. After an in-depth examination of
what business-concept innovation involves (for starters, its based on
avoidance, not attack), Hamel goes on to motivate his readers to see their
own revolutionary future, and train them in the art of being an activist. As
he puts it in various headings, be a novelty addict, be a heretic, know
whats not changing, surface the dogmas. And then get out there and
transform your ideas into reality. Not simply a round-up call, Hamels book
provides would-be activists with an intelligent, comprehensive plan of
action. He illustrates each imperative with examples of real-life corporate
rebels, such as John Patrick and David Grossman at IBM, Ken Kutaragi at
Sony, and Georges Dupont-Roc at Shell. His message is the same to old
and new companies alike: Industry revolutionaries are like a missile up the
tail pipe. Boom! Youre irrelevant! So join the revolution and avoid the
explosion. Hamel writes in a clear and compelling voice, preaching with
passion but supporting what he says with detailed, experiential evidence.
Each chapter is packed with probing questions and inspirational examples
that aim to dig through the apathetic corners of your mind and throw hand
grenades into any creative synapses still slumbering. Even the alternative
(read innovative) design of Leading the Revolution will jolt you into a new
level of awareness and imagination. Indeed, the only problem you might
have with this book is an increasing desire to put it down before the end,
get out there into the wild world of the activist, and start living the
revolution. --S. Ketchum
Personal Review: Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in
Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life by Gary
Hamel
With this book, the author brings out the new concept of "nonlinear
innovation".
"In a nonlinear world, only nonlinear ideas will create new wealth", he
writes. "Radical, nonlinear innovation is the only way to escape the
ruthless hypercompetition that has been hammering down margins in
industry after industry. Nonlinear innovation requires a company to escape
the shackles of precedent and imagine entirely novel solutions to customer
needs."
"Whatever you shoot is dead for a while before it starts to stink," Hamel
said. "The same goes for same with strategies. How many organization
carry this dead thing around with them, unaware of its irrelevancy until it is
too late?"
Change itself has changed, Hamel insisted - the pace of it is exponentially
faster than it was in the Big Brands era. Motorola missed the shift to

wireless technology by only a year, but in so doing lost a strategic war to
Nokia.
This book is about 10 fundamental rules that can help companies reach
new heights of growth and success:
1) Set unreasonable expectations
2) Stretch your business definition
3) Create a cause, not a business
4) Listen to new voices
5) Design an open market for ideas
6) Offer an open market for capital
7) Open up the market for talent
8) Lower the risks of experimentation
9) Make like a cell - divide and divide
10) Pay your innovators well - really well.
In this book, the author shows excellent awareness on the topic of
innovative companies in last few decades. The book has many examples
and case studies, which were later used by the other authors of leadership
and management literature. For example, the case study "Waking Up IBM:
How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue", being the part of
the book, and also separately published in HBR, was quoted in the books
by Martin Linsky and Ronald A. Heifetz, Anand Sanwal and Gary
Crittenden, Peter A. Gloor, Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler, Alain
Fayolle, and Wesley B. Truitt, to name a few.
The design of the book is also excellent. It has lots of color photographs,
and the layout of the book overall is very innovative.
I highly recommend this book, as well as the author's further publication
"The Future of Management".
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