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Innovation's encounter with the market results
in a game of both high risk and high stakes. Often its outcome
defies common sense: Superior new products flop, unlikely
ideas become runaway hits, and -- despite rapid technological
advances and intense interconnectedness -- change happens
at a snail's pace. What really happens during this
encounter? How can you increase your own odds on this complex
game board?
In The Slow Pace of Fast Change,
Bhaskar Chakravorti peels back the many factors that govern
an innovation's penetration into interconnected markets
-- and offers a game plan for successfully steering innovations
from the lab to the living room. Chakravorti explains the
vagaries of market adoption by highlighting a paradox in
the widely celebrated concept of network effects: While
everyone loves a great idea, individuals will embrace it
only if they believe others will too. In markets
with strong interconnections among participants, this "equilibrium"
slows adoption and protects the status quo -- despite the
innovation's clear superiority.
To win, innovators must unravel this status
quo equilibrium and replace it with one built around their
own innovations. The key is to imagine a desired plausible
endgame, and work backward to orchestrate the network of
individual choices to create conditions that make
this outcome happen.
Drawing on Chakravorti's hands-on experience
with many of the best-known innovating companies and insights
gleaned from his expertise in the practical applications
of game theory, this playbook offers go-to-market strategies
for:
- qualifying endgames to guide current
choices
- selectively enabling "influencers"
to propagate the innovation across the network
- closing deals with influencers that are
"win-win," and
- judging the nature of uncertainty to
decide how firmly to commit to the strategy
The Slow Pace of Fast Change shows
how to leverage interconnected individual choices in ways
that ensure your innovation will win when it meets the market.
Bhaskar Chakravorti is Partner and Thought
Leader at Monitor Group, the global strategy firm. He leads
Monitor's practice advising the world's preeminent companies
on growth strategies through the practical application of
game theory.
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