Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen

Succeeding in business requires anticipating major changes before they come—and this is a skill that can be learned, promises Columbia business school professor McGrath in this sharp, stimulating primer. She begins by discussing inflection points, the single points in time when everything changes, which, in business, are the moments that throw one’s assumptions and supposed knowledge into question. Changes happen “gradually, then suddenly,” and businesspeople just need to learn to anticipate them well ahead of time. Illustrating her points with stories of companies that have navigated inflection points with varying degrees of success, McGrath covers how policies go wrong at unexpected scale (as occurred when Facebook went public and, under “intense” pressure to monetize its model, drew controversy over the level of access to user data it gave to advertisers), the pitfalls and benefits of social media for business, tips for galvanizing one’s organization to react to new developments, and how to learn quickly and pay attention to what customers are saying. The prose can be dense and sometimes eyebrow-raising—“How innovation proficiency defangs the organizational antibodies”—but the message and advice are pithy, clever, and encouraging for anyone who doesn’t want to be surprised by the Next Big Thing. (Sept.)