The Three Box Solution

By Vijay Govindarajan

A strategy for leading innovation.

Leaders already know that innovation calls for a different set of activities, skills, methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership approaches. And it is well understood that creating a new business and optimizing an already existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges. The real problem for leaders is doing both, simultaneously. How do you meet the performance requirements of the existing business—one that is still thriving—while dramatically reinventing it? How do you envision a change in your current business model before a crisis forces you to abandon it?

Innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan expands the leader’s innovation tool kit with a simple and proven method for allocating the organization’s energy, time, and resources—in balanced measure—across what he calls “the three boxes”:

• Box 1: The present—Manage the core business at peak profitability
• Box 2: The past—Abandon ideas, practices, and attitudes that could inhibit innovation
• Box 3: The future—Convert breakthrough ideas into new products and businesses
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