The Three-Box Solution ─ A Strategy for Leading Innovation; Create the Future, Forget the Past, and Manage the Present

Leaders already know that innovation calls for a different set of activities, skills, methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership approachesit is well-understood that creating a new business and optimizing an already existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges. The real problem for leaders is doing both, simultaneously. How do you meet the performance requirements of the current businessone that is still thrivingwhile dramatically reinventing it? How do you foresee a change in your current model before a crisis forces you to abandon it?

Vijay Govindarajan expands the leader’s innovation toolkit with a simple and proven method for allocating the organization’s energy, time, and resourcesin balanced measureacross what he calls the three boxes”:
Box 1: The presentKeep the current business going
Box 2: The pastForget what made the business successful in the past
Box 3: The futureCreate the new model

The three box” framework makes leading innovation easier because it gives leaders a simple vocabulary and set of tools for managing and measuring the different sets of behaviors and activities, across all levels of the organization. Supported with rich company examplessuch as Mahindra & Mahindra, Hasbro, IBM, United Rentals, Dunnhumby, Nucor, and Tataand testimonies of leaders who have successfully used this framework to lead innovation, this book solves once and for all the practical dilemma of how to align an organization on the critical but competing demands of innovation.

Vijay Govindarajan (known as VG) is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Tuck School at Dartmouth and the Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation. He is the lead author of the New York Timesbestselling Reverse Innovation.