Harvard Business Review - 2012.05.pdf

DISTRIBUTION NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC STUDY IS ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC STUDY IS ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC STUDY IS ILLEGAL.Innovation Without TearsIf we owned the exclusive rights to the term“innovation,”wed be billionaires.Every company,big and small,seems desperate to unlock the secrets to in-novating,particularly at an affordable cost.And so in this issue we showcase some of the latest thinking about how to innovatewithout taking on excessive risk.In the lead article of our Spotlight“Innovation for the 21st Century”(on page 66),Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff of Monitor advise companies to create and rigorously maintain an“innovation portfolio.”The goal is to manage total innovation across the organization,rather than rely on ad hoc,stand-alone initiatives to somehow take a company produc-tively forward.Nagji and Tuff have looked at the companies that outperformed the S&P 500 and found that these leaders shared a pattern of innovation invest-ment:70%in enhancements to core offerings,20%in adjacent moves,and 10%in transformational initiatives.Also in this Spotlight,Anne Marie Knott of Washington Universitys Olin Busi-ness School introduces a metric that will help companies understand what kinds of returns theyre getting on their R&D.(See page 76.)Her“research quotient”allows managers to estimate the effectiveness of their R&D investments relative to competitors and to see how changes in R&D spending feed into both the bot-tom line and the companys market value.And take a look at the article(on page 116)by Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Busi-ness School,who tackles the controversial topic of whether companies should establish a one-language policy throughout their global operations.On the basis of her research,Neeley concludes that you ought to adopt English worldwide,and do so as soon as possible.There will be bumps along the road,but you can anticipate them and,if you follow some key principles,gain a competitive edge.Adi Ignatius,Editor in ChiefPhotograPhy:EliE honEinhbr.org14 harvard business reviewMay 2012From the E DISTRIBUTION NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC STUDY IS ILLEGAL.To increase its competitiveness,the U.S.needs to improve its job-training capa-bilities.It could do what School of One is doing for middle schoolersproviding personalized training and education at the pace and skill level of each individual.One way to do this is to create an“augmented reality”video game that would educate unemployed people and connect them to a national jobs database and to personalized training in a motivational format.The video game could have different tracks based on the skills and goals of the job candi-date.There could be different levels of increasing complexity,in which candidates could watch short“day in the life”videos posted by employers.Candidates could earn“badges”by doing service tasks such as helping to paint a school,or find temp positions or odd jobswith the ultimate goal of building the skills they need to gain employment.Matthew ODell,Notre Dame MBA 09The state of the world can be remedied in one of two ways:(1)revolution or (2)if principled leadership has the strength to give up much of its power,and empower levels below.Andrei Timoshenko,student,HEC ParisOne unsolved problem is that there is a lack of intergenerational dialogue in the public sphere.What we should do is create places where the generations can really get to know one another.Steven Lazar,unemployed college graduateAn obvious reform tactic for U.S.public schools:Contact the educational leader-ship of Finland,Canada,Korea,Singapore,and China to see how they consistently lead the world in math and reading capa-bility.I have yet to learn about any school or department of education trying to learn from countries that excel in this arena.This inaction is incomprehensible when you consider the corporate delegations that flew to Japan in droves to investigate its manufacturing techniques during the 1980s and 1990s.Jerry W.James,senior lecturer in finance,Kelley School of BusinessWe need to understand the worlds inter-connectedness.A nations well-being can-not be achieved by the downfall of another.Anita Sriram,founder and senior consultant,Grey Cells Consulting Group Outsourcing has lined the pockets of execu-tives and shareholders at the expense of the working middle class.This is a huge problem that needs correcting.One solu-tion is ending corporate taxes.Companies are collections of people,and people are already taxed personally,so why do we make corporations pay taxes that encour-age them to seek low-wage labor offshore?If companies did not pay taxes,they would have an incentive to maintain operations domestically.John Arnott,CEO,Nimble VenturesMaking government efficient will increase American competitiveness.We should identify similar services performed by several departments and centralize them.CEOs of civilian agencies should make pre-sentations directly to the public each ye