Advancing Innovation. Patrick J. Stroh
about Patrick Stroh’s book, Advancing Innovation, is its focus on linking innovation to value creation. This is not just a book of traditional activities of ideation, brainstorming, or prototyping. This is a book for practitioners—for those who have to make things happen, and for those businesses searching for a proven process that leads to real business value. I highly recommend you dig in to this book and use the templates and methodologies to reap the real rewards of innovation.”
—John R. Childress, Senior Executive Advisor on leadership, culture and strategy execution issues, Visiting Professor, IE Business School, Madrid
“Innovation can be complicated, messy, and hard to define. This book gives you what you need to make innovation happen and to engage the human beings who do the innovative work”
—John Sweeney, owner of the Brave New Workshop Comedy Theater and author of the bestselling The Innovative Mindset: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs
“In an increasingly rapid changing global economy, firms need to innovate more than ever to survive and thrive. However, many firms fail to innovate since they do not know how to measure or manage it. Patrick Stroh’s book, Advancing Innovation, offers practical guidelines to help firms organize, strategize, and measure innovation.”
—Kevin Linderman, Curtis L. Carlson Professor of Supply Chain & Operations, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota
“Advancing Innovation is an exceptional book. Through a holistic perspective, it combines innovation and management techniques in a unique way. This combination is of particular worth, as it gives innovators the freedom to enfold their ideas, while at the same time giving management the tools to control creativity. I liked the combination of helpful practices with the very concrete innovation value scorecard and its clear KPI proposals.”
—Janssen, S., Möller, K., Schläfke, M., Director Institute of Accounting, Control and Auditing, Chair of Controlling/Performance Management, University of St. Gallen
“Thank you, Patrick, for writing such a clear and concise roadmap for how corporate finance can add tremendous value in a nontraditional way— through innovation. Yes, finance can and should play in that arena, and this book provides important insights and a simple framework for approaching this goal. It’s a quick and compelling read on a subject that grows more important by the day.”
—John Kogan, President & CEO, Proformative, Inc.
“Today’s CEOs and boards face a real conundrum. Growth expectations are increasing at an accelerating pace. At the same time, shareholders have little appetite for surprises. And missed expectations are often punished by real declines in market value. Finding the right balance of strategy, risk, and innovation is key to achieving quality growth. And even the best strategy must be resilient—able to anticipate change and agile enough to adjust quickly. In his book, Patrick Stroh frames the challenge of successfully innovating while managing risk for growth. He provides both insights and examples of how CEOs and their organizations have achieved growth through innovation.”
—Dennis Chesley, PwC’s Global Risk Consulting Leader and Project Leader for the COSO ERM Framework update
“Patrick Stroh is 100% correct in his assertion that ‘Innovation is hard work and perseverance—it’s not for the faint of heart.’ His blueprint for Advancing Innovation is invaluable for those who have the heart and soul for taking risks and raising innovation value.”
—Harvey Mackay, author of the #1 New York Times best seller Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive
“This book in many ways is the first of its kind, dare I say ‘innovative,’ in that it goes way beyond the abstract to the practical, from the desire to innovate to the capability to innovate for sustainable competitive advantage and growth. The emphasis of this book is unique, focusing on innovation enablement, governance, measurement, and the role of the CFO team. Most organizations face the triple crown threat of competition, consolidation, and commoditization, and Advancing Innovation provides real-world implementation advice from someone who has actually done it with success.”
—Jeffrey C. Thomson, CMA, CAE, President and CEO, IMA®
“Patrick Stroh’s Innovation Value Score® adds an important and powerful new dimension to the domain of innovation, one of the hottest topics in both the private and public sectors for many years. What has been lacking in the dialogue is a rigorous framework for measuring innovation—and without measurement, how do managers know if they are succeeding? Stroh’s fresh thinking gives managers the framework and tools they need to evaluate the success of their innovation strategies.”
—John McClellan, Managing Director, Thought Leadership, Palladium
“Innovation needs to be at the core of every operational CFO in industry today. With the Innovation Value Score™, Patrick has unleashed a way for financial leaders to measure and govern our effectiveness at innovation. This is a must-read for every CFO looking to take their company to the next level!”
—Benjamin Mulling, CMA, CPA.CITP, CFO, TENTE Casters, Inc.
“Simply competing just won’t cut it anymore. This book gives us the guidance to move on to that next level with confidence: innovation. Not easy, but it’s essential for success in our faster-than-ever-paced world. Thanks to Patrick and one of our COSO sponsoring organizations, IMA, for getting the dialogue going and giving us some practical examples on how to get started on our innovation journey. This book is just chock-full of ideas and tools to help you drive innovation in your organization. Read it and identify your three gold nuggets as foundational elements for your innovation strategy.”
—Robert B. Hirth, Jr., Chairman, Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO)
“In order to maintain sustainable development and lead innovation, how can a CFO better demonstrate the insight and foresight to create value and exert sustained influence in an organization? Mr. Patrick Stroh’s book, Advancing Innovation, will tell you that answer!”
—Ms. Lixia Tan,
Foreword
David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in the early 1990s with several Harvard Business Review articles and a 1996 book, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action. Since that time, we wrote four more books as we learned how to extend and apply this powerful framework beyond our original intent—for performance measurement— to help solve an even bigger problem that all organizations had: strategy execution. Faithful adoption of our framework and insights has enabled many organizations to achieve transformational results through successful strategy execution.
In this book, Patrick Stroh has adapted our framework for the measurement and management of innovation. Innovation has been a hot topic for some time now, confirmed in research cited in this book that an overwhelming majority (92%) of respondents feel their organization should measure and govern innovation regularly as a key business process for sustaining growth and value. Many of the respondents (71%) work in firms where senior finance and accounting leaders have been asked to support the firm’s innovation efforts.
While strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards are typically created and implemented for organizational units, Norton and I have also seen maps and scorecards created for strategic themes that cut across organizational lines.1 This enables multiple business units and functions to align around a strategic theme, such as innovation. Successful implementation of an innovation strategy is a team sport, not just the responsibility of the research and development department. It requires active collaboration of multiple units—including R&D,