The Business of Innovation

How to capture workplace creativity, plan for m-business investments and thrive in the New Economy.

By Thomas Hoffman and Rick Saia

December 3, 2001 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld -

The Business of Innovation: Managing the Corporate Imagination for Maximum Results, by Roger Bean and Russell Radford (Amacom Books, 289 pages, $27.95). Innovation is a hallmark of any successful company. In this book, the authors, both consultants, draw upon innovation at several big-name companies (such as McDonald's Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and 3M Co.) to help give managers and executives guidance in enhancing, evaluating and exploiting workforce creativity.

For readers who like to breeze through a book, the authors offer useful bullet-point summaries at the end of each of the 15 chapters. — Rick Saia

D2D—Dinosaur to Dynamo: How 20 Established Companies Are Winning in the New Economy, by David Stauffer (Capstone Publishing Ltd., 232 pages, $27.95). Stauffer, a business writer who previously penned books on America Online Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc., does a solid job of amassing case studies on 20 Old Economy companies such as Bertelsmann AG and Merck-Medco Managed Care LLC that have succeeded in making the leap to the New Economy.

Although some of the companies featured have since fallen on hard times (Enron Corp., for example), Stauffer nevertheless deftly quantifies the financial and productivity gains that these dinosaurs have produced since emerging from the tar pits. — Thomas Hoffman

M-Business: The Race to Mobility, by Ravi Kalakota and Marcia Robinson (McGraw-Hill Trade, 302 pages, $24.95). To date, much of the discussion surrounding mobile commerce has dwelled on consumer applications, such as trading stocks via a handheld device or ordering a book from Amazon.com using a PalmPilot.

But in the trenches of corporate America, the real focus has been on mobile-business applications—those that allow airline mechanics to use a handheld to check for a needed part, or utility workers to use a wireless laptop to view a customer's service history before handling a service call, for example.

In this book, Kalakota and Robinson, who are the CEO and president, respectively, of Alpharetta, Ga.-based consultancy e-Business Strategies, offer readers advice about how to plan for and manage their m-business investments. The book provides an easy-to-follow, modular design that offers managers quick takeaways on everything from various portal revenue models to mobile applications in the supply chain.

Though the authors do a credible job of identifying the successes of mobile pioneers such as United Parcel Service Inc. and NTT DoCoMo Inc., there's little discussion of any mobile-business misstarts or failures that could have provided readers with some valuable lessons. — Thomas Hoffman

CyberRegs: A Business Guide to Web Property, Privacy and Patents, by Bill Zoellick (Addison-Wesley, 285 pages, $39.99). As the use of the Internet grows, so does government interest in Internet-based activities. Zoellick, a consultant and author of two previous books, uses CyberRegs to bring readers up to date on legal developments affecting the Internet, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (passed by Congress in 1998) and the E-Sign Act (signed into law last year). He also discusses many issues now being debated and speculates on possible legal outcomes.

The book is neatly split into four parts, each devoted to a major aspect of technology law: copyright, patents, electronic signatures and privacy. — Rick Saia

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