The Game Changer by A.G. Lafley

While not available until April 8, A.G. Lafley (P&G CEO) and Ram Charan (consultant) have written a book about driving revenue and profit through game-changing innovation. 

Take yourself back in time to, say, 8 years ago.  If I told you then that the CEO of P&G was publishing a book on game-changing innovation you'd either chuckle or shake your head in disbelief.  P&G had lost its luster -- it was slow moving, losing share and its stock losing value and its culture being ripped apart by the tumultuous reign of Durk Jager.  In the past 8 years, Lafley has led an amazing feat of reinventing a staid, though highly disciplined, behemoth into a global innovation powerhouse, more agile than many start-ups (okay that might be going too far!)... But for such a giant bureaucratic company, they have have become amazingly agile. 

So I've become a fan of P&G, and in particular their Connect & Develop program which really legitimized and mainstreamed the whole 'open innovation' movement.  And P&G's results have been impressive... through Connect and Develop and other innovation initiatives, P&G has seen double digit sales growth, grew their margins to over 50% and accelerated the new product pipeline while taking their R&D spending from 4.8% to 3.2% of sales during the same period.

I'll certainly read the book and let you know what I think.  Hope you'll do the same.

Comments

[Adam Wilson]

I wrote a review on The Game Changer at my book review blog Letters On Pages. You can find the review at: http://lettersonpages.blogspot.com/2008/04/game-changer-by-ag-lafley-ram-charan.html

[Franchise Whale]

Really enjoyed it, I wanted to click out and
you kept pulling me back in! Many thanks
and keep up the great work!