DRIVING GROWTH THROUGH INNOVATION: How Leading Firms Are Transforming Their Futures

It's hard to argue with this book's basic premise: innovation is good; stagnation is bad. Tucker has built a consulting firm around the idea that innovating can be taught. "In most companies today," he claims, "the practice of innovation can be likened to the mating of pandas: infrequent, clumsy, and often ineffective." Tucker's book is at its best when it moves from sweeping generalities to nitty-gritty how-tos, spelling out specific management tactics for fostering creativity and innovation. He wisely suggests there is a little entrepreneur within us all, and employees are naturally motivated to improve products and processes. A manager's job is to figure out how to channel those new ideas and take away the fear that can stunt them. There are useful strategies for making the field of innovation systematic and for shepherding new ideas through development to implementation. The book has some stylistic and organizational problems, though. Tucker's prose is clunky, and chapters sometimes resemble thin expansions of a Power Point presentation. In addition, Tucker bolsters his points with real-life examples, but nearly every company he names (such as 3M, DuPont and Sony) is large and relatively mature. Managers of small or young enterprises might question the relevance of those examples. (Nov.)