The Smart Organization: Creating Value Through Strategic R&D

The Smart Organization brings new perspective to management decision making throughout the organization. It identifies the key practices that enable successful organizations to deliver a stream of winning products and services. Smart organizations, say the Mathesons, have internalized nine interlocking principles essential in creating corporate cultures that emphasize making the right strategic decisions at the right time. They use best practices to support these decisions and sustain their success. These principles - among them, embracing uncertainty, disciplined decision making, and value creation culture - enable companies to make appropriate choices about their R & D planning, portfolio management, and product strategies. Drawing on the experiences of R & D-intensive organizations all over the globe, the authors illustrate the book with best practice examples from companies like Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Merck, Procter & Gamble, DuPont, Monsanto, and AT & T. They stress the importance of evaluating tradeoffs, investigating alternatives, and getting buy-in across functions to ensure that decisions will be viable from both the technological and the managerial perspective. They show how managers can apply these methods more broadly to create a smart organization. The Mathesons clearly demonstrate that changing the decision-making process is an efficient means of reforming culture and improving not just R & D but overall company performance.