When I started working on innovation ecosystems over a decade ago, the very concept was still relatively new. That has changed. What began as an academic idea has now emerged as a powerful real-world theme in the modern global economy.
The central message of The Wide Lens is that the ultimate success of any innovation effort no longer depends on you alone. While it is important to understand your customers and your competition, there is now a third consideration: the ability to recognize and align the critical partners on whom your success depends. This is what it means to navigate and win within your innovation ecosystem.
In the year since The Wide Lens was first published, it’s been gratifying to hear how it has resonated with readers across the economic spectrum, from corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors in the private sector, to policy makers, administrators, and community organizers in the public sector. The reality is that everyone today is impacted by the challenges and opportunities of innovation ecosystems—whether they recognize it or not.
Once you broaden your perspective to include your ecosystem, you can achieve a remarkable level of new insight. Each case in this book is an innovation mystery—a failure or success that traditional strategy tools simply cannot explain. But when we apply the Wide Lens approach to the problem, we will find that each one cracks according to a clear logic. This is the hallmark of powerful theory—taking a problem that seems impenetrable at the start and, by applying a consistent and systematic approach, making it look obvious at the end.
I wrote The Wide Lens to help readers develop a new set of intuitions for how to think about strategy and innovation. But intuition alone is only a partial solution. For while having the right intuition helps you get to the right answer, you also have to convince the people around you and set of a course of actions to take. It is for this reason that I developed the tools and frameworks in the book, and it is here that I think the book is having its greatest impact—in actually changing the conversation within organizations.
Beyond the stories and cases, the book offers a powerful structure for discussion and analysis. The frameworks help teams ask a clear set of questions, and the tools help structure coherent answers. Every chapter and every tool can be applied directly to your own teams and initiatives. For a general management dialogue, you can read each chapter and ask, “What would have been different had this taken place in our organization? What processes do we have in place to make sure we don’t fall victim to the same blind spots?” For a specific initiative, you can apply the tools in sequence to build a better strategy to safeguard your success.
Since the initial publication, I have developed a number of new Wide Lens teaching tools and cases that have already been adopted at a number of schools and companies. You can find these—along with a free online chapter, additional materials, articles, and updates—on the book’s Web site: www.TheWideLensBook.com.
I am excited to share these ideas with you. I hope that you will find them of value and that you will continue to share them further.
Ron Adner
Hanover, NH
January, 2013