Relentless Growth: How Silicon Valley Innovation Strategies Can Work In Your Business

The Achilles heel of every company is creating growth through new products and services -- a herculean challenge that must be met continuously, relentlessly, year in and year out. The antidote to this deficiency, argues high-tech expert Christopher Meyer, is to establish a "growth attitude," as Silicon Valley firms do, by making a sharp distinction between the innovation process and the operating pressures managers face daily. Drawing on fifteen years as an educator, researcher, and consultant in Silicon Valley, the world's oldest, most advanced, and most successful knowledge-based economy, Meyer presents a model for balancing these challenges based upon the actual strategies of Silicon Valley growth machines. He demonstrates how the Silicon Valley approach to growth and innovation has worked in companies beyond the Valley, such as Procter & Gamble, Honeywell, and Ford Motor Company. Leaders must promote and diffuse the growth attitude throughout their firms, showing how Valley leaders generate and spread competitive paranoia, focus employees externally, flatten organizational boundaries, set "stretch" goals, and nurture bright, passionate people motivated by "skin." Meyer's "loose-tight" approach to innovation enables companies to foster a creative environment while managing risk and costs. This book offers a five-part model for integrating innovation and operations: leadership's role in creating a growth attitude, strategic alignment, the innovation process and development paradigm, predictive and balanced metrics, and people as the key ingredient. By emphasizing leadership in innovation, Meyer guides companies to compete effectively while maintaining a vibrant, innovative culture.