Building the Future

Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation

by Amy C. Edmondson , Susan Salter Reynolds

Number of pages: 240

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

BBB Library: Creativity and Innovation

ISBN: 9781626564206

About the Authors

Amy C. Edmondson : Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management

Editorial Review

You could say that, with every step each of us takes, we are, in fact, building the future: each time we use resources carefully, each time we remember to turn the lights, and each time we choose a bicycle over a car. While it is certainly true that the future is always unfolding—arriving whether we actively pursue it or not—some pioneers glimpse technological or societal possibilities before the rest of us do, and they set out to make them happen. Building the future is about bringing a desired future into being on purpose.

Book Reviews

"Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about—innovation far more audacious than a new way to find a restaurant or a smart phone you can wear on your" — Harvard Business School

"Building the Future provides a rare inside look at how a start-up company takes on the world and copes with numerous challenges along the way. Go it alone or partner? Keep the bold goal or go for small wins? Seize other opportunities in technology or stick with the smart-cities plan? Edmondson and Reynolds present thought-provoking lessons for those who want to dream big and need big teaming to get the work done.” — Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, and bestselling author of Confidence and Move

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Wisdom to Share

Many organizations have shifted to a new way of working that makes teaming and learning part of the job.

We are going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully not for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Once upon a time it was conventional for young men to view the group life of the big corporation as one of its principal disadvantages. Today, they see it as a positive boon.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Many organizations have shifted to a new way of working that makes teaming and learning part of the job.

Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.

Culturally, the public image of manager-as-rule follower has been gradually replaced by the fast-moving dealmaker in movies like “Wall Street” and “The Social Network.”

“While large firms certainly contribute innovative ideas, small and medium enterprises are the catalysts for solutions in that they provide disruptive technology, which isn’t constrained by existing models…”

Audacious innovation, such as building a new city, requires bridging industry and cultures, with more empathy and skill than comes naturally.

Future-building flourishes when successful, credible experts glimpse new possibilities and help shift their conversation.

Influencing is essential when it represents a new and unfamiliar possibility; a growing number of people must grasp the need for innovation, to build a foundation for realizing it.

The deeply held biases that pervade any professional sphere must be unearthed and overcome to allow people to see and celebrate strengths each domain brings, rather than to simply bemoan the limitations.