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The Scaling Value Playbook
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The Scaling Value Playbook

A practical guide for creating innovation networks for impact and growth (De Gruyter Business Playbooks)

John Bessant and Ian Gray
De Gruyter, 2024
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Editorial Rating

8

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  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Innovation’s challenges don’t end at the pilot stage. In this helpful guide, inventor Ian Gray and innovation professor John Bessant argue that successful innovation hinges on your ability to build a strategic network that supports and adds value to your efforts. The authors show you how to map out and navigate relationships with consumers, competitors, and others who can help — or hinder — your innovation’s adoption. Infographics, sidebars, and exercises — and, in the ebook, links to additional case studies and printable worksheets — help ensure the content is eminently engaging and practical.

Summary

Plan for a long and challenging innovation journey beyond a successful pilot stage.

Entrepreneurs Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and James Dyson all commented that most “overnight successes” take years of hard work. In the early 1900s, for example, inventor Otto Rohwedder came up with an ingenious bread-slicing machine. He persevered through years of financial difficulties, a factory fire, and user skepticism. Then, in 1928, one commercial bakery decided to use Rohwedder’s invention to sell sliced bread and saw a 2,000% increase in bread sales within a few weeks. Over the course of the following five years, most bakeries in the United States installed a slicing machine, and by 1933, 80% of bread came to consumers presliced.

The process of testing, improving, and launching ideas garners a lot of attention. But that process is only the beginning of generating value from an innovation. Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter notes that the middle stages of the value journey often teeter on the edge of failure. Innovations that succeed long-term do so because they scale. And they scale because their inventors or organizations approached...

About the Authors

Inventor and adviser Ian Gray has 25 years’ experience in strategic innovation. Emeritus professor John Bessant has published more than 40 books on managing innovation.

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