Strategies for Managers, Management - General & Miscellaneous, Research & Development - General & Miscellaneous, Business - General & Miscellaneous

The Smart Organization

Name: The Smart Organization
Author: David Matheson
ISBN: 9780875847658

by Matheson, David, Jim, James E.

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Overview

Why do some firms continually make poor R&D decisions while others can deliver a stream of successful products and services? According to the Mathesons, successful firms have internalized the nine interlocking principles of smart R&D—the building blocks of a corporate culture that emphasize making the right strategic decisions at the right times, and aligning organizational practices to support these decisions and sustain their results. The nine principles include embracing uncertainty, opening information flows, and encouraging systems thinking. Once in place, these values enable companies to make appropriate choices about their R&D planning, portfolio management, and project strategies. The authors stress the importance of evaluating trade-offs, investigating alternatives, and getting buy-in across functions to ensure that decisions will be viable from both technological and managerial perspectives. They use best practice examples from companies including General Motors, Pilkington Glass, and BankOne of Ohio to demonstrate that the methods used to enrich R&D planning can be applied more broadly to create, in effect, the smart organization.

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Booknews

Drawing on research and consulting experience with Coca-Cola, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Daimler-Benz, 3M, and other companies, the authors argue that the key to improving research and development efforts and company performance rests not upon focusing solely on business processes, but upon changing the decision making process itself. A "smart organization" incorporates principles such as embracing uncertainty, disciplined decision making, value creation culture, and evaluating trade-offs to make appropriate choices about R&D planning, portfolio management, and product strategies. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.