Author: Vijay Govindarajan

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Comments:Probably one of the classics in management theory about innovation, The Three Box Solution develops Harvard Professor Govindarajan’s idea that, in order to innovate, companies need to create a separate innovation team; nevertheless linked to the core business; and evaluated not in terms of financial metrics but in terms of its ability to test assumptions about the future. Box 1 is about managing the present. It is about competing for the present through incremental measures and is about closing the performance gap. Boxes 2 and 3 are about selectively forgetting the past and creating the future. They are therefore about competing for the future by responding to weak and non-linear signals to develop new business models and new customers. This is about closing the possibility gap. Each of the two areas must benefit from separate resources which need to be ring-fenced so that, when times get tough, the creation of the future is not jeopardised.

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See also The Day after Tomorrow: how to survive in times of radical innovation by Peter Hinssen

and Dealing with Darwin: how great companies innovate at every stage of their evolution by Geoffrey A. Moore