The game-changer. How every leader can drive everyday innovation

The Game-changer is the result of the experience of the author A.G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble (henceforth P&G), and Ram Charan, one of the most influential management thinkers in the world: their goal, as stated in the preface of the book, is to distill their experience and research and extract the lessons that could be used by others. And, in my opinion, they perfectly reach this objective, showing how to change the game of business by making innovation the centrepiece. Based on the premise that a strategy based on innovation is the best way to attain sustainable and profitable growth, the book begins with a clear definition of what the authors mean by Game-Changer, that is “a visionary strategist who alters the game his business plays or conceives an entirely new game”, “a creator who uses innovation as the basis for sustaining profitable organic growth”, “a leader who understand that the customer is the boss, not the CEO”, and other definitions. This last in particular, reflect the main content of the book, as stressed in all the chapters that follow the preface. Chapters 1 and 2 briefly but clearly describe how P&G integrate innovation into every is done, and covers all the main topics related to innovation, leading the reader to the main concept of the book that: […] the overarching or guiding principle for game-changing innovation that delivers sustained organic growth and profits, regardless your business (consumer products, services, or business-to-business industrial products), is placing the consumer or customer at the centre of this framework. While many say they are “customer-centric”, few actually put the customer as boss in the centre of the innovation process. This concept is depicted in a picture that clearly summarize the eight drivers for innovation, each one subject of the following chapters. The rest of the book is structured into three parts. Specifically, Part One illustrates the power of considering the customer as the real boss (not the CEO) and choosing the goals and strategies that cannot be accomplished without innovation: in a statement, what the authors refer to as “customer-centric innovation game changing”. Starting from the example of how P&G acts (i.e. P&G puts the customer at the centre of innovation process, from the ideation stage to the end, that is when the customer buys the products), the authors stress that at the basis of every innovation success, there is the understanding of three main things: first, the customer at both the rational and the emotional levels, second, how a family's income influences their daily decisions about the brand and products to be acquired, and third, the customer's articulated and unarticulated unmet needs. Once this is done, it is important for a company to be able on the one hand to segment their bosses (read the customers), even if referred to the same product, and on the second hand to involve them in the co-creation and co-design of the product desired. All the company's activities are translated into goals and strategies, that is the choices required by the goals, that in turn should lead the company to a sustainable sales and profitability growth. To be a growth driver, company has to do what it does better by combining its core strengths. Part Two is dedicated to the detailed description of the practical framework for the operationalization of innovation. This framework requires at the basis an enabling structure to consistently fund and organize innovation. This structure to be effective needs an open architecture (that is an architecture that enables a company and its people to open themselves up to get ideas from anywhere at anytime), where customers, suppliers, competitors and other interested third parties are involved in the innovative process. These consideration lead the reader to the framework proposed by the authors, composed by five building blocks for converting an idea into a commercial winner, without forget the concept that a company have to work together with its customer to “cook the idea”. This part ends with a list of eight ways for the leader of innovation to anticipate the risks of innovation and lead his team in correctly managing them. Finally, Part Three deals with the culture of innovation: specifically, an innovation culture can be created and nurtured by focusing on what the authors refer to as the “4 Cs and an O” elements: courageous, connected and collaborative, curios, and open. In this last section, the authors report their observations for how to build teams that make innovation happen and to identify, coach and develop their leaders. First of all, both the authors recognize co-location as a powerful mean to create an integrated team: “innovation comes not just from thinking up new ideas, but from combining and recombining them and then putting together the people who can turn concept into reality”. To clarify this concept, the authors adopted the similitude with a sport team: as a sport team has certain defined positions, so must an innovation team. These figures are the idea generator, project manager, the executor and finally, but not for importance, the team leader. Game-changing innovation leaders have four value-added tasks that differentiate them from other team leaders: setting the vision that cannot be accomplished without innovation, inspiring, integrating, and making the right things happen by dealing with the real issues. Moreover, these team leaders are not born but “made”: to make them, the authors propose a four-blocks process. The Game-Changer ends with a strong chapter called How Jeff Immelt Made Innovation A Way of Life, where some lessons could be learned from the life experience of J. Immelt as CEO of GE, and in particular from the actions he took in place to put customer-centric innovation at the centre of day-to-day work at GE. This chapter lead to the conclusion that: […] you don't have to be the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company to be an innovation leader. At any organizational level, you can find ways to put customer-centric innovation at the centre of your work. This book offers practical examples for any manager of big as well as small companies. By means of the experience of a successful academic-turned-consultant (“Ram Charan is the most influential consultant alive” – Fortune) and an equally successful chief executive (“A.G. Lafley has made Procter and Gamble great again” – Economist), the book helps the reader to achieve higher growth and higher margins by managing in the right way all the innovative activities. It also helps leaders to meet the challenge of innovation, and achieve profitable growth through team creativity. I found the book an interesting read, full of real life examples that represent the strength of Lafley and Charan's contribution and make it easy reading and covering all the issues on innovation and innovation culture development. Each chapter offers useful practical examples of P&G's innovation success, as well of other worldly known companies (Nokia, LEGO, Samsung and many others) to illustrate how the CEO must also be the CIO, that stands for “chief innovation officer”. I found the book a significant one for two main reasons: on the one hand, the argument of the book itself, that is innovation. Innovation should be central to the agenda of every manager and company in the world: as stressed by the authors of the book as well as from all researchers or companies' managers, innovation is a fundamental prerequisite to compete and survive. On the other hand, while this book is written about some of the world's largest companies that over the years have become game changer, its lessons are applicable to any company and should be seen as an opportunity to learn from the successes of these world-leading companies.