From Re-inventing Management and Management Education (Irving Wladawsky-Berger):

What can a business do to maximize its chances of survival? Foremost is to embrace a culture of innovation. If the environment is going to change, you want to be among the first to anticipate the changes and start preparing for them. A commitment to innovation may not always help your business stay out of serious trouble, but having a good strategy and understanding of your options will help you transform the business and survive.

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Re-inventing management is one of the most important responsibilities any company needs to undertake to maximize its chances of survival into this future. Re-inventing management education is one of the most important responsibilities of universities to help better prepare future managers for the kind of world they will encounter. These tough challenges will require us to open our minds to new ways of thinking. In the end, that is what innovation is all about.

I agree, re-inventing management can’t wait for academia; companies must identify, attract and nurture their next generation of leaders…

…Executives typically rise up in the organization by being very good operational managers. These management jobs are very tough and getting tougher. Being a good manager takes very hard work, attention to detail and organizational discipline.

The management executives at technology companies, and especially the CEO must not only be good at attention to details, organization and operations but also at technology vision and innovation, for short-term and long-term execution. For this, the CEO must have a great understanding of realistic/achievable short and long-term strategies, but also have a strong CTO who shares the attention to details, organization and operational skills but in addition is a strong technology/business visionary individual; at the end of the day, it is about maintaining competitive advantage and earnings with the help of technology innovation (as well as non-technology innovation).

Related to this see Business, Innovation and Survival (Irving Wladawsky-Berger)

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