Every company and school needs to add Need, Speed, and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness, and Tame the World’s Most Wicked Problems to their mandatory reading list.
Vajay Vaitheeswaran really understands the need for innovation, change and embracing new ideas in order for America to survive and thrive into the future.
This is especially true for those in aging markets like the auto industry and higher education.
Need, Speed, and Greed is divided into three sections: Why Innovation Matters, Where Innovation is Going, and How to win in the Age of Disruptive Innovation.
This is cover-to-cover reading for everyone. I really looked deeper at the closing chapter Can Dinosaurs Dance. While applied to the American auto industry, think about the strides made by Elon Musk and Google, the application of dramatic change fits quite nicely into many universities around the country.
Clearly elite universities of world like MIT, Harvard, Chicago and Cambridge are competing very well against schools in China and India, the globalization of education is aimed at low to mid level universities who struggle to maintain four-year graduation rates with exceptional GPAs.
With the one warning sign in chapter seven: The Sputnik Fallacies does address how states are cutting education by drastic amounts. Today governors in Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Connecticut, and Wisconsin along with Illinois have announced those large budget cuts. This goes directly against lessons of Andrew Gore in the book’s closing chapter. Danger to provide the future of innovation seems is just around the corner.
Its impressive to see how Need, Speed, and Greed hilights companies including IBM and BMW both founded between 1900 and 1910 have proven to be innovative and competitive while Vaitheeswaran writes how other companies (Wang and DEC) have been out of business for more than a decade. Strong lessons for any company or college who refuses to change.
Vaitheeswaran points to a number of titles throughout Need, Speed, and Greed that I have read as sources of inspiration and examples of success. Guess I have been moving along on the right track. I am also taking notes of new unread books referenced as well.