Create Marketplace Disruption by Adam Hartung - Book review

Create Marketplace Disruption

How to Stay Ahead of the Competition

By: Adam Hartung

Published: July 2008
Format: Hardcover, 256pp
ISBN-13: 9780132343916
ISBN-10: 0132343916
Publisher: FT Press



"A considerable amount of of business education, and the activities undertaken by managers as they advance their careers, is dramatically removed from implementing, or even understanding, innovation", writes strategy consultant and Managing Partner of Spark Partners, Adam Hartung, in his visionary and dynamic book Create Marketplace Disruption: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition. The author provides fresh thinking and a new approach to innovation and change in the marketplace, and how management can embrace that dynamism to achieve industry dominance over the competition.

Adam Hartung recognizes the critical importance of change to any company, industry, and to the economy as a whole. He also understands that embracing the concept and inevitability of change and disruption are very difficult to grasp for many business leaders. As a result, formerly industry leading companies find themselves left behind by change that they believed was impossible to see in the marketplace. The paradox, as described by Adam Hartung, is that the very organizations that had created the new success formula, are the very companies who discover too late, that their once dominant formula led to their own demise. Because of the success of their formula, the corporate leaders chose to ignore warnings of change and disruption, and defended and extended their system long past its useful lifespan. As a result, their companies began a spiral downward into oblivion.



Adam Hartung (photo left) urges corporate leaders to seek out disruption and innovation, as embracing those principles are critical to the long term success of their organizations. The author goes farther than many discourses on innovation, and recommends that business executives create their own disruption, and challenge their organizational success formula. As Adam Hartung describes innovation, failure to disrupt the current business model by the organization on its own terms, will only mean change and disruption is caused by competitors and the economy. Adam Hartung offers convincing evidence that current success by an organization, if extended and defended against innovation, will result in inevitable decline or failure of the company.

For me, the power of the book is how Adam Hartung not only describes the current problems and myths facing companies, but also how he offers an alternative technique for long term business success. Unlike many books that simply diagnose the problem, Adam Hartung provides a viable and transformational model for embracing and even initiating change. The author shares case studies of corporations, formerly at the pinnacle of their industries, who were blindsided by disruptive innovators that changed their market sector almost overnight. The failed company success formulas had been thought previously to be unbeatable, and were defended and extended by themselves, and even their competitors and by academia. The old paradigms became locked into place, and were resistant and even hostile to changes that could have saved the company and restored it to competitive leadership.

What happened was change and innovation, on someone else's terms, and not on those of the failed corporations. Adam Hartung offers his Phoenix Principle, of practicing constant disruption until it becomes part of standard corporate thinking. This seeking of continuous innovation is part of what the author calls the white space where new ideas are created and put into practice. Finding that critical white space is critical to establishing fresh ideas and establishing new formulas for success. At the same time, keeping the white space open causes organizations to continue seeking and exploring new concepts, preventing the trap of being locked into the older system. Instead of defending and extending a previous, but no longer effective business model, concepts of the Phoenix Principle and white space cause deliberate disruption and innovation on the company's own terms.

I highly recommend the brilliat and must read book Create Marketplace Disruption: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition by Adam Hartung, to anyone seeking fresh, groundbreaking ideas for breaking through the barriers of outdated, but formerly successful business models. This important book establishes clearly that holding onto older ideas, while discouraging innovation and creative disruption, will lead to the company demise. The very defenders of the older paradigm are the very people who contribute to business failure, because they are locked into that success formula. Companies must seek out innovators and disruptive agents to ensure long term corporate success.

Read the often challenging but always rewarding book Create Marketplace Disruption: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition by Adam Hartung, and put the Phoenix Principle and the concept of white space to work for your company. Cast off the blinders of current success formulas, that are already showing signs of decay and decline, and embrace change and innovation. Disrupting your own corporate success today will lead to even greater success and profitability tomorrow.

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