PART III

Ways to Build Innovative, Exponentially Developing Companies

Over the past two decades, we have participated in dozens of innovation exercises with numerous companies. We have guided legacy energy giants in creating market opportunities by taking risks on innovations and better business models. We have helped retail chains and supermarkets defend themselves against Amazon and other online-only vendors. We have helped financial-services institutions defend themselves and then partner with financial-technology companies and have helped a national government to rethink the resource allocation, recruitment strategy, and future requirements of its army. Unlike most innovation experts, we have also served as senior executives overseeing major innovation efforts. At Accenture, Ismail served as a senior executive driving change for global clients; at IBM, he lived through one of the most difficult innovation periods in recent history as Big Blue pivoted for a third time. Vivek has helped build two successful software companies, one of which went public with $120 million in revenue in a short five years. As an academic, he has been conducting masterclasses and workshops on exponential innovation for some of the largest companies in the world.

We have also read as much of the relevant research as we could. In doing so, we realized that research on innovation is of wildly varying quality. We believe that, between our real-world experience and our (over)exposure to academic thinking and models on the topic, we have come to understand what works and what doesn’t. This is why we wrote the book. And in this section, we will share with you what we have learned.