How to reignite growth by…
• Breaking free of mental legacies
• Changing your frame of reference
"There is not much new in management, but there is a lot new in business." - Champy
Here are some of the key nuggets on leadership & innovation from this must-read book:
1. Companies that outsmart the competition, i.e. Outsmarts, look for dramatic growth, while incumbent businesses i.e. Incumbents are content with incremental growth. Think disruptive innovation...
2. For Outsmarts, growth is about ambition
3. Outsmarts make strategic choices based on intuition, whereas Incumbents often get bogged down in research and analysis
4. Outsmarts stay focused on what they do best, while Incumbents searching for new ideas end up losing their sense of purpose in the process
5. Outsmarts focus on how they can better serve customers; Incumbents focus on their competitors
6. Outsmarts accept risk as a normal part of doing business. Incumbents are risk averse, and risk taking hampers progress
7. Outsmarts have a culture that values and freely promotes innovation. Incumbents subject innovation to a cumbersome process. Innovation must be deeply embedded in a company's culture and encouraged at every turn. Think innovation blockers.
8. Outsmarts depend on culture to manage behavior. Incumbents use rules and controls.
9. Outsmarts engage all their people in constructing and executing strategy. At Incumbents, strategy is an abstraction for most people.
10. Just do it! Taking a page out of Nike...
Reviews
"Champy provides case studies of eight exemplary companies, each highlighting a valuable insight for discovering opportunities. Each vignette describes a different business environment, making the book widely applicable. It differs from most innovation books (e.g., the highly regarded The Game-Changer, by A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan, 2008) by its external orientation. Champy recommends studying the environment first, then changing the firm to address newly discovered opportunities, which is opposite to the strategy presented in The Game-Changer." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate students as well as practitioners. -- J.J. Janney, University of Dayton (Reviewed in 9/2008 CHOICE)
“Champy’s engaging prose, fascinating success stories, penetrating reflections, and provocative challenges to the status quo capture your full attention from the first page to the last and leave your mind swirling with new thoughts about how to exploit opportunities in a very different world.”
– Ray Stata, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Analog Devices, Inc.
“To outsmart or be outsmarted, that is the question in modern business. Jim Champy has found the answer, in fact many answers, by looking inside amazingly successful companies. And he tells their simple stories in this book that is so delightfully short it can be read on one flight.”
– Dr. Robert “Bob” Metcalfe, General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners
“In this remarkably readable and incisive book, Jim Champy provides case studies of fast growing, innovative companies that have created and implemented successful strategies that are practical, market tested, and reproducible in today’s global marketplace.”
– Denis A. Bovin, Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Bear Stearns & Co., Inc.
“This book shows how to spot opportunities in a world that looks, at times,
like everything is done. Jim has strung together nine pearls that reveal the essence of entrepreneurship.”
– Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, Founder and Chairman, Sycamore Networks, Inc.
This concise, fast-paced book shows how you can achieve breakthrough growth by consistently outsmarting your competition. Champy reveals the surprising, counterintuitive lessons learned by companies that have achieved super-high growth for at least three straight years. Drawing on the strategies of some of today’s best “high velocity” companies, he identifies eight powerful ways to compete in even the roughest marketplace. You’ll discover how to find distinctive market positions and sustainable advantages in products, services, delivery methods, and unexpected customers with unexpected needs.
According to Champy, "Charles Darwin has a lot to teach. As he might put it, Businesses breed beyond available customers; Companies with successful strategies have a better chance of survival; And successful enterprises force out weaker ones, creating whole new business models."
References:
Outsmart! How to do what your competitors can't. Jim Champy.
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