The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks

From the greatest minds in business today comes a groundbreaking new blueprint for executing the next stage of customer-created value. C.K. Prahalad, the world's premier business thinker, and IT scholar M.S. Krishnan unveil the critical missing link in connecting strategy to execution--building organizational capabilities that allow companies to achieve and sustain continuous change and innovation.

The New Age of Innovation reveals that the key to creating value and the future growth of every business depends on accessing a global network of resources to co-create unique experiences with customers, one at a time. To achieve this, CEOs, executives, and managers at every level must transform their business processes, technical systems, and supply chain management, implementing key social and technological infrastructure requirements to create an ongoing innovation advantage.

In this landmark work, Prahalad and Krishnan explain how to accomplish this shift--one where IT and the management architecture form the corporation's fundamental foundation. This book provides strategies for

• Redesigning systems to co-create value with customers and connect all parts of a firm to this process
• Measuring individual behavior through smart analytics
• Ceaselessly improving the flexibility and efficiency in all customer-facing and back-end processes
• Treating all involved individuals--customers, employees, investors, suppliers--as unique
• Working across cultures and time-zones in a seamless global network
• Building teams that are capable of providing high-quality, low-cost solutions rapidly

To successfully compete on the battlefields of 21st-century business, companies must reinvent their processes and culture in order to sustain innovative solutions. The New Age of Innovation is a complete program for achieving this transformation to meet the needs of the end consumer of the future.

From the Back Cover

The new global standard for innovation and corporate growth

“Prahalad and Krishnan show us how innovation will be driven by the seamless integration of strategy, business processes, technology, and people. While this may seem an insurmountable task, the authors delight the reader by creating an architectural framework for business transformation. I have yet to come across a book that offers such a clear roadmap.”-S. Ramadorai CEO Tata Consultancy Services

“A great analysis of the challenges facing business today. Personalization of an individual consumer’s experience, globalization, global logistics, evolvingbusiness processes and information technology creates great complexity. C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan provide a framework to structure this complexity. Once understood, standardized and simplified these drivers provide an enviable foundation for innovation.” ―Ralph Szygenda, Chief Information Officer, General Motors

“Prahalad and Krishnan argue that to create value in a flattening world, companies must develop highly flexible innovation strategies that 'fold the future in.' To do this, they must partner with truly global networks of partners and customers―and rethink everything from their core capabilities to their corporate culture. Prahalad’s and Krishnan’s book is a compelling roadmap for this next phase of globalization.” ―Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft

About the Author

C.K. Prahalad is the international bestselling author of The Future of Competition, Competing for the Future and The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. He is the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Prahalad was named “The World's Most Influential Management Thinker” in 2007 by the Times of London and “the most influential thinker on business strategy today” by BusinessWeek.

M.S. Krishnan is a Hallman Fellow & Professor of Business Information and Technology, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.