10 Rules for Strategic Innovators:From Idea to Execution

Even the best companies – the ones with powerful products and proven business models -- eventually stop growing. That’s why the leaders of these companies find emerging high-growth industries so attractive. Although they lack a proven formula for making a profit, these industries offer huge opportunities for companies that are fast enough, and smart enough.

But building new businesses while also maintaining today’s business demands a delicate balance. Until now, there has been no practical guidance.

In 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble finally unravel the truth about what really works. The authors, both on the faculty at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, founded the William F. Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership in 2000. Since then, they have focused on conducting the research for this book, aimed at guiding the leadership of a new, high-growth business inside an established organization.

For four years, they interviewed dozens of executives and compiled multi-year histories of 10 companies that had endeavored to build a breakthrough new business, and supplemented this analysis with previous research on numerous other cases.

Based on both the successes and failures, they identified three central challenges:

1. Forgetting the core business’s proven success formula;
2. Borrowing selected resources from the core business; and
3. Learning how the new business can succeed in a new and uncertain environment

In this summary, you’ll learn how to overcome these challenges.