From Incremental to Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation

Having spent a few years helping lead the strategic and innovation planning for a Fortune 50 company, Vivek and Ismail’s book lined up well with my own experiences. The book starts out by dispelling several commonly held but incorrect myths about innovation. It is not a committee or an off-site or even a Silicon Valley outpost. At its heart, the authors explain that innovative companies, large and small, must shift their risk and reward systems, particularly in terms of their culture. They point out that in most large companies, the highest paid people are usually tasked with maintaining the status quo and reducing risk. For innovation to flourish, the rewards need to flow towards the opposite roles, towards people that take big risks and drive systemic change. The middle of the book highlights several important strategies for innovation-led growth, including platform business models and facilitating out-of-heirarchy connections within organizations. The last part of the book takes a deep look at four specific companies that are leading their industries with innovation and new business models: Logitech, Microsoft, Walmart and NextEra Energy. The book is full of anecdotes that provide new, insightful perspectives on many of the companies we all read about every day. It offers a set of clever, memorable frameworks that make applying the lessons easy, like the 8 sins of stasis. I strongly recommend this book to anyone working in a large company, particularly for leaders who are struggling to keep pace with smaller, more nimble competitors that need to understand the first principles behind genuine innovation.

At a challenging and critical moment in history, when companies are being forced to innovate during external disruption, From Incremental to Exponential provides real examples/case studies of businesses attempts at innovation, and analysis of the decisions made. All too many other business books speak in the hypothetical, but From Incremental to Exponential provides real knowledge from real experts on real situations. An easy to consume read, I would highly recommend it to entrepreneurs and established business leaders alike, as we all navigate 2020 and beyond.

This a fascinating book capturing how creative individuals and small startups have innovated creating amazing products and services for us and the world. It seems plausible our large legacy organizations could compliment what individuals and startups have done by using legacy resources and talents for exponential innovation and good for the world. An excellent book!

Few days ago I wrote a comment in Twitter about Vivek\’s excellent book. If I may summarize it in one single expression, here it is: \”Wisdom is to live in tune with the model of the changing world\” — Thiruvalluvar It’s a must read !

The book is a terrific description of many of the forces driving rapid innovative performance. It is highly recommended for anyone in business or who is involved in R&D, value creation, and innovation. Alas, they claim that Steve Jobs got the computer mouse from PARC. SRI developed the mouse and Jobs took a license from SRI. In addition, most of what PARC did with the personal computer interface came initially from Doug Engelbart\’s team at SRI, including the mouse. The \”Mother of All Demos\” can be seen on YouTube, which shows the presentation by Engelbart in San Francisco that overnight transformed computing. The list of fundamental achievements demonstrated in that one presentation has never been exceeded. Engelbart won every award a technologist can win and he is one of the true computer science geniuses of Silicon Valley and the world.

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