Navigating Badlands

"This book offers a concise, coherent interpretation of a large set of global developments and their impacts on companies. Nevertheless, one of the valuable messages reads, ‘Don’t get lost in familiar territory.’ The Badlands metaphor provides an innovation imperative, which transcends a pure technological scope and truly integrates the social and organizational experimentation we need to embrace. Navigating the Badlands provides a reconceptualization of how we view the world and strategies to do something about it. A great book."
–Harald Preissler, DaimlerChrysler AG, Research Society and Technology

"Navigating the Badlands offers a thought-provoking exploration into the upheaval occurring in business and society. Those leaders wanting to thrive through this transformation will welcome this opportunity to challenge their thinking and broaden their perspective in new fresh ways. Leaders wanting to positively impact our new global society will embrace the Badlands message and insights on the criticality of ethical leadership."
–Lydia Beebe, corporate secretary, ChevronTexaco

"This book will change the way you think about the future. Mary O’Hara- Devereaux’s insights are both sobering and empowering: a must-read for citizens of the twenty-first century."
–Annalee Saxenian, dean, School of Information and Management Systems, University of California, Berkeley

"Navigating the Badlands provides a clear economic and social context for companies to understand and respond to the impact of global transformation on the consumer."
–Denise Morrison, president, global sales, and chief customer officer, Campbell Soup Company

A Road Map for Navigating the Global Business Landscape

"This book offers a concise, coherent interpretation of a large set of global developments and their impacts on companies. Nevertheless, one of the valuable messages reads, ‘Don’t get lost in familiar territory.’ The Badlands metaphor provides an innovation imperative, which transcends a pure technological scope and truly integrates the social and organizational experimentation we need to embrace. Navigating the Badlands provides a reconceptualization of how we view the world and strategies to do something about it. A great book."
–Harald Preissler, DaimlerChrysler AG, Research Society and Technology

"Navigating the Badlands offers a thought-provoking exploration into the upheaval occurring in business and society. Those leaders wanting to thrive through this transformation will welcome this opportunity to challenge their thinking and broaden their perspective in new fresh ways. Leaders wanting to positively impact our new global society will embrace the Badlands message and insights on the criticality of ethical leadership.& quot;
–Lydia Beebe, corporate secretary, ChevronTexaco

"This book will change the way you think about the future. Mary O’Hara- Devereaux’s insights are both sobering and empowering: a must-read for citizens of the twenty-first century."
–Annalee Saxenian, dean, School of Information and Management Systems, University of California, Berkeley

"Navigating the Badlands provides a clear economic and social context for companies to understand and respond to the impact of global transformation on the consumer."
–Denise Morrison, president, global sales, and chief customer officer, Campbell Soup Company

Author Biography: Mary O'Hara-Devereaux is the CEO of Global Foresight and an internationally recognized business forecaster and strategist. She is the coauthor of Globalwork from Jossey-Bass. She has consulted for numerous global players, including ChevronTexaco, Coca-Cola, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, CITIC Pacific, Ericsson, Skandia, and Cable and Wireless as well as government agencies in the United States and China. In addition she has been a senior faculty member at the University of California, University of Hawaii, Peking University, and the Institute for the Future.

The turbulent stock market, worker migration, an overhaul of the traditional methods of strategic planning–today’s global business environment has undergone dramatic changes and there are more changes on the way. How can organizations stay on top during this perilous new phase of global transformation?

In this groundbreaking book, Mary O’Hara-Devereaux–an internationally renowned business forecaster–shows how organizations can hone their competitive edge during these uncertain times. Using the metaphor of traveling through the badlands of the American West, Navigating the Badlands offers the principles, tools, transformative strategies, and essential understanding executives and business leaders need if they are to weather the rugged, global business landscape of the future. Throughout the book O’Hara-Devereaux reveals how business leaders can seize the opportunity to create new value from successful alliances, reach global markets, and find top talent.

Navigating the Badlands is filled with illustrative stories of successes and failures from a wide variety of industries, geographic areas, and organizational models that can serve as models for organizations moving forward in the unforgiving business climate. The author explores the challenges of developing executive readiness and describes nine "Organizational Pains," including new global competitors, disruptive innovations in the industry, obsolescence of a key technology central to a core business model, dramatic shifts in customer desires and purchasing habits, and loss of key talent. She offers ideas for resolving these potential stumbling blocks. She also shows how to create "New Capabilities" that enable organizations to innovate, engage, and integrate a web of relationships needed for long-term success and outlines dynamic "Principles of Transformation" that will be required for doing business in the badlands.

Navigating the Badlands provides powerful diagnostic and communication tools, short-term and long-term strategic support, and new collaborative suggestions for the perilous journey ahead.

“This book offers a concise, coherent interpretation of a large set of global developments and their impacts on companies. Nevertheless, one of the valuable messages reads; ‘Don’t get lost in familiar territory.’ The Badlands metaphor provides an innovation imperative, which transcends a pure technological scope and truly integrates the social and organizational experimentation we need to embrace. Navigating the Badlands provides a reconceptualization of how we view the world and strategies to do something about it. A great book.”
—Harald Preissler, DaimlerChrysler AG, Research Society and Technology

“Navigating the Badlands offers a thought-provoking exploration into the upheaval occurring in business and society. Those leaders wanting to thrive through this transformation will welcome this opportunity to challenge their thinking and broaden their perspective in new fresh ways. Leaders wanting to positively impact our new global society will embrace the Badlands message and insights on the criticality of ethical leadership.” ;
—Lydia Beebe, corporate secretary, ChevronTexaco

“This book will change the way you think about the future. Mary O’Hara- Devereaux’s insights are both sobering and empowering: a must-read for citizens of the twenty-first century.”
—Annalee Saxenian, dean, School of Information and Management Systems, University of California, Berkeley

“Navigating the Badlands provides a clear economic and social context for companies to understand and respond to the impact of global transformation on the consumer.”
—Denise Morrison, president global sales and chief customer officer, Campbell Soup Company

“This is imperative reading in sustaining your competitive edge in the global, U.S., and China marketplace by focusing on three key factors—fluid strategies, adaptive leadership, and learning about the emerging economic powerhouse China.”
—Tom Chin, CEO, Sino-American Development and Investment Corporation

“Navigating the Badlands is a brilliant and timely analysis of the challenges we face as both business leaders and global citizens. This analysis captures the sources of today’s underlying current unease which exist in the business community as well as in individuals. These ‘Badlands’ are contextualized and dissected by Mary’s perspective as an experienced futurist and successful practitioner.”
—Derek Van Eck, president, Van Eck Global Investments, New York

“Navigating the Badlands will help Chinese CEO’s build innovation companies for the global marketplace and avoid the common problems and pains of their global competitors. This book will end up in every Chinese strategy meeting.”
—Chen Zhangliang, founder and CEO of several Chinese private ventures and member, National Peoples Congress, president, China Agricultural University, vice president, Peking University

“When the hearty pioneers of yesteryear headed west in their wagons, the most savvy among them no doubt took along the early reports of explorer John Wesley Powell or the Lewis and Clark expedition as a rough guide to what they’d encounter in the ‘Badlands.’ Today’s new pioneers in a fast transforming world—the metaphorical ‘Badlands’ in which we suddenly find ourselves—alas now have a similar rough guide. To survive and thrive along the dusty, dangerous and hazard-strewn trial that leads into the global future, keep you powder dry, your canteen full and have Mary O’Hara-Devereaux’s remarkable new book at reach in your saddlebag.”
—David Judson, vice president, Kavrakoglu, Istanbul, Turkey

“Mary O’Hara Devereaux first guides you through the major organizational and leadership shifts we have all been challenged to navigate, and then she delivers a carefully constructed framework that optimizes organizations and leaders opportunities to thrive in these turbulent times. She takes you into the future and gives you the tools and inspiration to plan from there.”
—Pamela Heman, executive director, Leadership California, board of directors, American Society of Association Executives

“Navigating the Badlands is clear, easy to read, and explains deeply the concepts that I have come to use almost daily in my thinking and strategic development. The Badlands framework is relevant in almost every conversation I am in about the future of the nonprofit sector, philanthropy, and social change. The framework helps me to understand what has changed, is changing, and will change, and what skills, capacities, and strategies we need to support and nurture through this transition time. The framework provides a posture toward the world—a way of thinking about and managing change, a way of exploring the future so that you might then great it better prepared.”
—Ellen Friedman, vice president, Tides Foundation and Tides Center

“Young people are a vital demographic that companies, governments, and the social sector can not afford to ignore. Mary’s strong sense of this generation’s importance ensures the relevance of this book for those looking to reach this audience. Read it and learn how to engage and inspire them to realize the potential of their abilities within your organization and our global society.”
—Jennifer Corriero and Michael Furdyk, cofounders, TakingITGlobal, Young Global Leaders, Davos Economic Forum 2002, Toronto, Canada

“In this sweeping and penetrating analysis of the global forces driving change over the next twenty-five years, futurist Mary O’Hara Devereaux’s experienced hand draws a compelling, holistic map of the rapidly-shifiting territory we are entering, ‘The Badlands.’ Fortunately, she also provides us with critical navigational tools for systematically scouting our paths into this dangerous future. In our Business Across Borders training sessions, her Cassandra-esque prophecies made a powerful impression on our MBAs and corporate guests alike.”
—Leslie Jarmon, director, Business Across Borders Plus Program, MBA Program, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin

“Provocative and insightful . . . complex and straightforward, Mary O’Hara-Devereaux presents a comprehensive and compelling picture of the impact of globalization. The lessons from other industries told so well in this book have profound implications for health care. You can use the tools in this book for her new Health Care Badlands Map to breakthrough the gridlock and launch the radical innovations we so desperately need.”
—Philip R. Lee, M.D., professor, Stanford University School of Medicine, former chancellor, University of California San Francisco; former undersecretary for health and human services, Clinton Administration and Johnson Administration

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Thriving In The Decade Of Radical Transformation
The global business environment is currently experiencing a number of dramatic changes that will forever shape the future of organizations. According to internationally renowned business forecaster Mary O'Hara-Devereaux, the turbulent stock market, worker migration and major changes in strategic planning require organizations to shift their focus to navigate through the rugged business landscape of the next decade. In Navigating the Badlands, the author uses dramatic stories of successes and failures from companies in a variety of industries to create organizational models for moving forward in rough business terrain.

From Industrial Age to Information Age
O'Hara-Devereaux uses the metaphor of traveling through the badlands of the American West to describe the next 10 years of struggle and transition that organizations face today. To help companies bridge the space between the end of the Industrial Age and the "full promise of the Information Age," the author provides them with tools and warnings that can prepare them for the road ahead. Her goal, she writes, is to soften the ride to creating a "vibrant, equitable, and fully integrated global society underpinned by robust economic growth worldwide." She explains that today's leaders and organizations are mismatched with the needs we will face in the new global reality.

O'Hara-Devereaux draws her observations and prescriptions for success from her extensive research, which has taken her from the villages of Africa to the businesses and governments of Asia and Latin America to the technology centers of California's Silicon Valley. With a team of researchers that included economists, technology experts, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and historians, she examined the turbulent times of the past to make better sense of the foreboding future terrain.

Navigating the Badlands is organized around four themes that are both interlinked and distinct: globalization, new leadership crucible, organizational metamorphosis, and social choices. Regarding social choices, O'Hara-Devereaux explains that stepping up to the international plate and "making the right choices to create a global commons is essential."

Eight Principles of Transformation
Although she covers all these themes with many suggestions, she primarily focuses on the journey of organizational leaders across the badlands and the transformation that organizations will need to undergo to achieve success. O'Hara-Devereaux writes that a successful journey requires principles of transformation to guide the way, as well as "a new leadership paradigm to anchor them." Her set of principles is made up of the following:

• Scan, Scout, Steer. Strategically improving all leaders' readiness to identify opportunities and risks, and providing necessary resources, enables them to act quickly on emerging opportunities.
• Act With Integrity. Integrity includes honesty, coherence, connectedness, wholeness and vitality.
• Seek Collisions. Surprise encounters with outsiders create the optimal diversity firms need.
• Learn Rapidly. Trial and error efforts constitute a critical pathway for accelerating learning.
• Engage Cultures. Authenticity, courage, resilience, adaptability, persistence and a sense of humor will help.
• Innovate Radically. Seek out heretics and mavericks.
• Make Decisions Fast. Leaders must nurture an action-oriented stance throughout their whole company.
• Execute With Discipline. Survival requires organizations to create cultures that can execute masterfully with focus, self-possession, poise and confidence.

Why We Like This Book
O'Hara-Devereaux presents compelling stories of pioneers who have been able to lead the hero's journey and share their leadership lessons with others across generations, cultures, times and places. Her unique perspective turns principles and organizational tools into strategies that can resolve the pains of transformation and help organizations thrive in the future. Copyright © 2005 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Mary O’Hara-Devereaux is the CEO of Global Foresight and an internationally recognized business forecaster and strategist. She is the coauthor of Globalwork from Jossey-Bass. She has consulted for numerous global players, including ChevronTexaco, Coca-Cola, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, CITIC Pacific, Ericsson, Skandia, and Cable and Wireless as well as government agencies in the United States and China. In addition she has been a senior faculty member at the University of California, University of Hawaii, Peking University, and the Institute for the Future.