Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

If you're like most people, you bet your career and company on innovation--because you must. Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation offers you a new way to think about and manage innovation that will dramatically improve the odds of success.

Authors James Andrew and Harold Sirkin, senior partners in The Boston Consulting Group, describe an approach to managing innovation based on the concept of a cash curve--which tracks investment against time. They ask the questions you need to ask: How much should you invest in a new product or service? How fast should you push it to market? How quickly can you get to optimal value? How much additional investment should you pour into sustaining and building the product or service?

Payback offers you practical and economically sound advice on when to pursue cash flow indirectly by first pursuing other benefits, such as brand and knowledge. It also shows you how to reshape the cash curve by using different business models--integrator, orchestrator, and licenser--each of which balances risk and reward differently.

The authors then present a short list of decisions and activities that you must make--not delegate--to achieve a high return on innovation. You won't find facile answers in Payback --but you will find valuable insights and practical guidance for mastering one of the most challenging and critical business activities: innovation.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

The authors, consultants with extensive experience assisting corporations, report that innovation problems are not due to lack of ideas but rather to how corporations turn those ideas into cash or payback. We learn about three different innovation models: Integration, becoming the sole owner and executor of the innovation and its only or primary beneficiary of rewards; Orchestration, partnering on significant and important phases of the process as primary owner of the idea that drives its development; and serving as Licensor, the owner of the idea and sometimes of its production and launching but having limited involvement thereafter. The authors analyze start-up costs, speed to market, speed to scale (time from launch until achievement of planned volume), and support costs to evaluate potential payback success. Although the book can be taken as an infomercial for their consulting firm, the authors offer superb advice on managing innovation with a disciplined and analytical approach to determining how much and where to invest, providing valuable insight for leaders of companies large and small. --Mary Whaley Copyright 2007 Booklist

Author notes provided by Syndetics

James P. Andrew is a senior vice president and director of The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), leads BCG's innovation practice, and helps companies worldwide to improve the return on their investments in innovation. Harold L. Sirkin is senior vice president and director at BCG and leader of the firm's Global Operations practice. He consults with companies in many business sectors about their innovation activities.