The New Age of Innovation:Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks

The key to creating value and the future growth of every business depends on accessing a global network of resources to co-create unique experiences with customers, one at a time.

To achieve this, companies must transform their business processes, technical systems, and supply chain management.  In our summary of The New Age of Innovation, by C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan, we’ll explain how to accomplish this shift – one where IT and the management architecture form the corporation’s fundamental foundation.

Prahalad is the international best-selling co-author of The Future of Competition andCompeting for the Future and the author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.  He was named “The World’s Most Influential Management Thinker” by theTimes of London and “the most influential thinker on business strategy today” byBusinessWeek.  Krishnan is professor of business information and technology at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Prahalad’s previous books touched on three critical aspects of innovation and value creation:

1. Value will increasingly be co-created with consumers, whether they are rich consumers in the West or very poor consumers in Bangladesh.
2. No single firm has the knowledge, skills, and resources it needs to co-create value with consumers.  Every firm has to learn to access resources from multiple sources.  And
3. The emerging markets can be a source of innovation.

After four years of research, Prahalad and Krishnan have concluded that the next frontier in innovation is the building of organizational capabilities that allow a firm to create the capacity for continuous innovation.

As we’ll explain, companies must reinvent their processes, analytics, and architecture in order to sustain innovative solutions so they can successfully compete in the world of 21st century business.