Corporate Innovation in the Fifth Era: Lessons from Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft

by Matthew Le Merle, Allison Davis

Over the last 30 years a host of new technologies have begun to change every industry driving us into a new era of human existence. The companies who have been most able to tap into these new innovations have become the most highly valued companies in the world. To do so, they have created a new approach to corporate innovation. In “Corporate Innovation in the Fifth Era,” Silicon Valley insiders Matthew C. Le Merle and Alison Davis share the lessons they have learned from two decades of interaction with Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft as well as other leading companies. The authors describe this new approach so that every company can be ready as we enter the Fifth Era.

Genres: Business

290 pages, Paperback

Published May 19, 2017

Reviews

[Murat Tortopoğlu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good for junior Innovation managers.
good survey for corporate innovation
list of external innovation sources.
do not expect any reusable process or strategy tool.

[Carter · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some interesting tidbits here, but the book is not to my taste.

[Dr. Tathagat Varma · Rating 3 out of 5]

As companies grapple with large, dynamic and complex problems, no company can perhaps claim to have a crystal ball for every single business it wants to play and win. It is inevitable that large organizations, especially, need to have a very thoughtful corporate innovation strategy that allows them to focus on key priority areas.

I especially liked 2-3 key insights in this book. It is a good resource for anyone running or interested in any corporate innovation program. Secondly, some perspectives on #disruptive vs #incremental innovation are very insightful. We often think people start out on one of these, a priori. What is interesting that in real-life, that seldom happens. Even the most innovative companies look at a problem and work towards eliminating the customer pain points. To that end, it is rather serendipitous if and when any of these endeavors turns out to be one or the other. Another interesting data point was based on their research that everything else equal, close to 80% reasons why companies fail to innovate is due to strategic reasons as compared to other three operational reasons. So, it might not be the right ROI to overindex on those operations factors to build a strategic innovation muscle.

https://www.fifthera.com/corporate-in...

[Jose Miguel Porto · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Fifth Era with digital and biotechnology innovations will accelerate disruptive change at a rate that humankind has never experienced before. We have an entire generation of people (who will soon be the majority) born after 1990 that were born connected (with Internet). They are unaware of a time before the Internet and don’t understand many of the assumptions that shape the mindsets of older people. The winners of the Fifth Era will be the most innovative, thus large organizations need to focus on innovation and pursue a new approach to corporate innovation. This book shares some of the best practices from the most innovative companies in the world.

[Leland Roling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this in 2020 probably doesn’t lend a hand to this book as most of these topics are common shoo talk among corporate innovators. The latter half of the book is where the real value lies. Good insight on what it takes at the leadership levels to adopt true innovation, something that any company wanting to survive must do nowadays.