The Wide Lens

A New Strategy for Innovation

By: Ron Adner

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

How can great companies do everything right - identify real customer needs, deliver excellent innovations, beat their competitors to market - and still fail? The sad truth is that many companies fail because they focus too intensely on their own innovations, and then neglect the innovation ecosystems on which their success depends. In our increasingly interdependent world, winning requires more than just delivering on your own promises. It means ensuring that a host of partners - some visible, some hidden - deliver on their promises, too.

In The Wide Lens, innovation expert Ron Adner draws on over a decade of research and field testing to take you on far ranging journeys from Kenya to California, from transport to telecommunications, to reveal the hidden structure of success in a world of interdependence.

A riveting study that offers a new perspective on triumphs like Amazon's e-book strategy and Apple's path to market dominance; monumental failures like Michelin with run-flat tires and Pfizer with inhalable insulin; and still unresolved issues like electric cars and electronic health records, The Wide Lens offers a powerful new set of frameworks and tools that will multiply your odds of innovation success.

The Wide Lens will change the way you see, the way you think - and the way you win.

©2012 Ron Adner (P)2012 Gildan Media, LLC

Very insightful on big picture innovation

Enjoyed the book. It offers a lot of thoughts and insights that the typical innovator wouldn't necessarily consider. Glad I read it.

Brilliant Innovation and Strategy Implementation

What did you love best about The Wide Lens?

The book list many real examples of innovative products that succeeded or fail. Each case is discussed professionally by explaining the innovation process, market research for the product, marketing campaign, and how the end product fail or succeeded when the it was lunched in the market. The Value Blueprint is an excellent tool recommended by the author to identify the hurdles and roadblock for the new product.

great book, insightful and practical

this book addresses real life innovation challenges.
I work in an innovation team and the tools presented in this book defenetly contribute to better analyzing ecosystems and strategy formulation
Thanks Ron Adner for your contribution

Great book

I enjoyed reading this book, it is very informative with a lot of real world stories.

Great examples for each point!

If you could sum up The Wide Lens in three words, what would they be?

Comprehensive, with lots of real world examples to demonstrate each point.

Any additional comments?

I bought this book to supplement my doctoral level class - Marketing Innovation - and it really helped me gain a 'full view' picture of innovation in business