Having read this book two thoughts come up:
1. They should have had much more in-depth data, why stick so much to the surface ?
2. Is their overview of ways to deal with radical innovation comprehensive ?

Seen the impressive list of authors and the impressive research they've done the book is disappointing. Maybe because they were limited on what they could disclose, time pressure etc.

To learn more about dealing with radical innovation I recommend the books 'Corporate Venturing, 'Intrapreneuring', 'Webs of Innovation', 'The Innovators Dilemma'.

So should you read 'Radical Innovation ? Well if you're active in the field it should be on your shelves, otherwise I wouldn't spend my dollars on it.

I think this book will have the greatest value if read in combination with Yoffie and Kwak's Judo Strategy. Why? Because the authors of that book correctly stress the importance of maximizing organizational speed, agility, balance, and leverage in any competitive marketplace. What they do not address (except perhaps indirectly or by implication) is the importance of radical innovation which, more often than not, proves to be a decisive competitive advantage. Indeed, the seven authors of the book I am about to review identify "Seven Challenges in Managing Radical Innovation" (see Table 1-1 on page 8) and meeting these challenges effectively indeed requires maximizing organizational speed, agility, balance, and leverage. Obviously, no single volume asks all "the right questions," much less provides "all the right answers." Hence the importance of carefully correlating the ideas from several different sources. I also strongly Michael Hammer's The Agenda which offers a "model" by which decision-makers in any organization (regardless of its size or nature) can determine appropriate priorities and then set appropriate objectives before formulating strategies and tactics by which to achieve those objectives.

The subtitle of this book ("How Mature Companies Can Outsmart Upstarts") reminds me of Jack Welch's comments when explaining why he admires "small and sleek" companies:

"For one, they communicate better. Without the din and prattle of bureaucracy, people listen as well as talk; and since there are fewer of them they generally know and understand each other. Second, small companies move faster. They know the penalties for hesitation in the marketplace. Third, in small companies, with fewer layers and less camouflage, the leaders show up very clearly on the screen. Their performance and its impact are clear to everyone. And, finally, smaller companies waste less. They spend less time in endless reviews and approvals and politics and paper drills. They have fewer people; therefore they can only do the important things. Their people are free to direct their energy and attention toward the marketplace rather than fighting bureaucracy."

For those who seek radical innovation in so-called "mature" companies, the challenges which the authors of this book identify are obviously much greater than they are for those in the "small and sleek" companies which Welch admires. A majority of upstarts pursue a "judo strategy" (in one form or another) because they lack the resources of their much larger competitors. (David had no chance if he wrestled Goliath.) For that reason, they cannot afford incremental innovation. They must take bold, decisive action when and where it will have the greatest impact.

When explaining what they call an "imperative," the authors of this book make a critically important distinction: "...incremental innovation usually emphasizes cost or feature improvements in existing products or services and is dependent on exploitation competencies. In contrast, radical innovation concerns the development of new businesses or product lines -- based on new ideas or technologies or substantial cost reductions -- that transform the economics of a business, and therefore require exploration competencies." This is indeed a key distinction.

Much of the material in this book was generated by the authors' research over a period of five years (1995-2000) which followed the development and commercialization activities of 12 radical innovation projects in 10 large, established ("mature") firms. For the authors, a radical innovation project must have the potential to produce one or more of these results: an entirely new set of performance features, improvements in known performance features of five times or greater, and/or a significant (i.e. 30% or more) reduction in cost. What the authors learned from the research serves as the foundation of their conclusions; also of what they recommend to those who seek radical innovation in their own organization. All of the ideas presented are anchored in an abundance of real-world experience. Although this brilliant book's greatest value may be derived by decision-makers in "mature" companies, I think substantial value can also be derived by decision-makers in the "upstarts" with which such companies as DuPont, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, and Texas Instruments will continue to compete. One final point: All of the "mature" companies discussed in this book were once "upstarts" themselves. How revealing that all of them are now so hard at work on regaining or preserving certain competitive advantages which once served them so well.

Very succinct yet comprehensive. It has key advice on the marketing, finance, and people skills necessary to see a new idea advance to a great new product. This book should be required reading for all MBA students, managers, and anyone who has the dream of a great new idea but is unsure as to how to make it come real. Although the title states that the book focuses on how more established companies can create environments to promote radical innovations, the information can readily be applied to any firm regardless of length of operations - and yes, to individuals.

The authors present a list of 7 challenges that face the radical innovator and then they provide the competencies, or skills, that are necessary to meet these challenges. Throughout the text, real-life examples from well-known firms help the reader to understand how these challenges come about, and to even recognize a challenge should it present itself. The examples do tend to focus on radical innovations that are new technological products, but the recommendations could also be applied to other new ideas such as new management systems or organizational structures.

This CD lives up to the high quality standards of the Peterson Field Guide series and is a marvelous introduction to bird songs. I have taught ornithology courses for a number of years and this is the CD I recommend to my students.

To anyone just discovering the joys of birding, visual identification of birds can be overwhelming with over 650 species found in North America alone. If visual identification is difficult, audio identification can be nearly impossible.

BACKYARD BIRD SONG comes to the rescue by focusing the listener's attention on 28 of the most common backyard birds. Learning these songs and calls will boost your confidence and enable you to identify nearly all of the birds you hear on a daily basis. The recordings are grouped into categories of similar sounds such as "sing-songers" and "whistlers." This clustering facilitates comparisons of potentially confusing bird vocalizations.

The CD's one down side is that you cannot go directly to the song of a given bird. You are limited to selecting a song grouping and then waiting for the desired bird.

BUSINESS BASICS is a very comprehensive overview of business issues designed for law students and lawyers. Students taking a basic course in corporations or business associations will find it useful, especially if they lack a business background. It covers not only corporate law, but also such broader topics as insurance, retirement planning, real estate purchases, and the like. Relatively little traditional doctrinal analysis; more an explanation of how business works. Don't think of it as a study aid for your corporations class-think of it as a one volume equivalent of an undergraduate business administration program. On that basis, I highly recommend it.

Its a really nice book which says about al the things an ice cream firm needs....It shows the different types and is amazing.

This is one of the best examples I've seen that shows what the adolescents actually think, instead of some overqualified person analyzing what they "think" the students think. This was a good study that looked at several different types of schools, and got to the route of the problems that each of these schools face. It's very easy to read and I found myself unable to put the book down. Good job!!

This book was surprisingly helpful and easy to follow. Step by step instructions, paragraphs, and plenty of examples. A short paragraph is written about each featured writer to help the reader better understand the stories. Makes English class a breeze!

Thanks so much for the great deal and fast shipping! The item arrived in perfect condition!

This is a book that you will use over and over again. I started using this book because it was a required textbook for a Writing Class that I just finished. The book talks about the purposes of writing, your audience for writing and qualities of writing. The book was especially helpful for planning and drafting your first essay. It shows you how to write using Illustration, Comparison, Cause and Effect and Arguments. It also gives you examples of these writing styles. At the end of each Chapter, you have discussion questions and suggestions for writing. It is full of possible topics for you to write essay's on.

A wonderful book full of ideas and resources.

I've just re-read this book, after first reviewing it over two years ago. I noted Gutman's unreliability then, but on re-reading I can only report that my opinion of Gutman has fallen further. I originally awarded it two stars; I now think that was generous.

This book is more careless of source material than any book has right to be, but it's not ordinary carelessness. All errors and misstatements happen to support Gutman's case for a proto-Nazi Wagner. When a book's errors all support one thesis, that pattern must raise questions not just of competence but also of integrity.

For example Gutman claims Wagner was "sympathetic" to proto-Nazi Bernhard Förster's attempted German community in Paraguay. But Cosima's Diaries show that Wagner held Förster in general and the South American project in particular in contempt. Why this "mistake"? Because it suits Gutman's thesis.

Or take Wagner's late essays. If you read the essays themselves rather than Gutman's profoundly dishonest exegesis, you find a man wrestling with his own racism.

In _Heroism and Christianity_, for example, Wagner does take it as a given that white people are superior to other "races". Wagner, like many other European and American artists, was the product of a racist culture and it is unhistorical to pretend otherwise. But then Wagner writes that although people find the idea of the commingling of all human "races" into "a uniform equality" distressing, this is because of their cultural blinkers. "It is only looking at it through the reek of our own civilisation and culture than makes this picture so repellant," he says.

Christianity, Wagner continues, is superior to other religions because it is aimed equally at all "races" while Judaism and Brahminism, for example, include noble ideas but are aimed at only one "race" or caste. Although (he writes) it is "natural" [meaning "likely to occur in nature"] for strong "races" to rule weaker "races", the rule of one "race" by another has led to "exploitation" and an "utterly immoral system". Wagner's answer is equality of all "races" under "a universal moral concord", something Wagner suggests that Christian doctrines could bring about. (Wagner was not a Christian, but in later life admired Christian rituals and doctrines.)

The essay is not enlightened by modern standards, but in its historical context it stands as Wagner's rejection of the proto-Nazi ideas of his own day. Gutman's systematic distortions are regrettable not just because they go beyond mere inaccuracy but also because they are much less interesting than the truth.

A passage recently cited as an example of Gutman's merits provides another example of Gutman's method:

"Monsalvat was Wagner's paranoiac concept of a small self-contained elite group, uniquely possessed of the truth, obsessed with its 'purity,' and struggling with an outside world it held worthless. Redemption was promised the hard-pressed knights, but, obviously, the Wagnerian redeemer was not to be found among Jewish craftsmen or lepers. Not by accident did Guernemanz almost immediately remark upon Parsifal's noble, highborn appearance. He knew what signs to read. Racial heredity and strict breeding, not natural selection, formed the new mechanism of salvation. Wagnerian eugenics had come into being; in his latest writing the composer had embraced the darker implications of Darwinism."

Problems? First, Gutman misses the way _Parsifal_ shows Montsalvat critically and ironically (our first glimpse is of its watchmen sleeping on the job), as a damaged community that fails to live up to its ideals. An example is the knights' and squires' rejection of Kundry as Outsider, a moral fault for which the saintly Gürnemantz, clearly Wagner's mouthpiece, reproves them.

Second, the reference to "Jewish craftsmen and lepers" is Gutman's invention. Neither are mentioned, let alone disparaged, in _Parsifal_.

Third, Gutman must know that the remark on the hero's "noble appearance" is standard in Wagner's source material, and referred not so much to race as to "gentle upbringing", meaning having "courtly" deportment as opposed to the gestures and manners of a peasant. Example? In Wagner main source, von Eschenbach's _Parzifal_, similar observations are made about Parzifal's half-brother Fierafiz, whose mother was black.

Fourth, the Montsalvat community is not "self-contained". Wagner's text mentions that Gawain is a member of the Montsalvat community, though that character is also a member of Arthur's court. And Gawain, like the other Montsalvat knights, spends as much or more time out in the world than at Montsalvat.

Fifth, Montsalvat's alleged "racial hereditary and strict breeding" is more Gutmanian invention. Not only does _Parsifal_ not contain any such idea, or anything remotely like it, but Wagner's text rules out the possibility. Gürnemantz tells us that Montsalvat was founded by Titurel, who has had one adult child and is still alive when the opera begins. Gürnemantz was also a founding Montsalvat member. "Breeding program"? When? Instead the Montsalvat community must have grown through that bugbear even of modern racists: immigration. Some of Montsalvat's knights and squires may be children of original members, but that's hardly a breeding program. (By the way, Wagner's Montsalvat is in Spain. Not Germany.)

Can a passage so densely inaccurate be the product of mere carelessness? I think not.

Actually Gutman misses an intriguing possibility about Parsifal's ancestry. Parsifal comes from "Arabia". His father Gamuret was probably Welsh or Cornish, but we are told that Herzeleide was pregnant with Parsifal when Gamuret was in "Arabia". Since knights didn't take wives with them on crusade, the implication is that Gamuret met Herzeleide in "Arabia". (Wagner's text concerning Herzeleide differs significantly from his sources.) It's amusing in this context to consider that Wagner's Parsifal may have been what the media is currently calling "of Mid-Eastern appearance", and quite ineligible for the Hitler Youth. Still, the Nazi thing is Gutman's obsession, not Wagner's. Oh, and far from loving _Parsifal_, as Gutman would have you believe, the truth is that the Nazis banned it.

In short, Gutman's "first casualty" wasn't Wagner, but truth. An irresponsibly unreliable book.

Cheers!

Laon

Occasionally in life one encounters a biography so insightful, so rich in detail and so beautifully written that it nearly transcends its subject and stands as a work of art unto itself. It is in this category that Gutman's masterpiece belongs. There is so much to learn from this historiographical account of the great composer's life that one scarecely knows where to begin praising it. Best of all, in the Ernest Newman tradition, Gutman shows us the real Wagner, warts and all, and traces the all-too-tangible line leading from the composer's pen to the Nazi nightmare. At times shocking, Gutman's work "opens the kimono" on the breeding ground of hatred and racism that Bayreuth became, and the composer's steadily increasing obsession with the Jews. He offers incontrovertible proof, now widely accepted and expounded on in the indispensable works of Rose and Weiner and Zelinsky, of how Wagner incorporated these racist ideal into his operas. At the same time, Gutman recognizes the incredible genius of his subject, and praises the works mightily. His account is always balanced, fair and backed by evidence. It is no wonder the Wagner apologists have criticized this book heavily, while the leading musical journals and book reviewers have blessed it with near-unanimous acclaim: Many simply cannot bear the fact that their favorite composer directly influenced Hitler and had a streak of true evil in him. Gutman bravely shatters myths and shows us Wagner for what he truly was: a composer of incomparable gifts and a human being of precious few qualities. If you haven't read this book yet, I strongly recommend you explore it now.

This is an extraordinary book -- on a par with Maynard Solomon's Mozart -- but don't just take my word for it. The New York Times Book Review called it the "richest and best-accomplished single volume on Wagner in English." The late Paul Hume, himself no slouch as a musician, musicologist, and critic, called it "superb."

In 455 dense pages, Gutman, retired as a university professor and lecturer at Bayreuth, chronicles the comings and goings of Richard Wagner's life, probes the recesses of his often messy mind and his frequently strained relationships with other artists, lovers, thinkers, political figures, and hangers on, examines the development of his ever-changing esthetic, and analyzes the novelty of his music and, more importantly, the sometimes bourgeois, sometimes frightening sentiments of his words. As a reader, it helps to have some prior familiarity with the plots of Wagner's operas and with nineteenth-century European intellectual history.

Gutman's central thesis is that, as a composer of music, Wagner was a genius; as a poet, he was barely literate; and as a human being, he was egomaniacal, boorish, uneducated, greedy, opinionated in the extreme, and racist. In 1968, when Gutman first advanced this thesis, Wagner was enjoying a resurgence of critical acclaim as a poet. Otherwise there is nothing to be surprised by here. The composer's problems with patrons and creditors, his voracious sexual appetites, his meretricious relationship with King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the appeal of the composer's operas to Hitler and hence to the Third Reich, his involvement in the events of 1848, and his anti-semitism have long been well known.

In developing his thesis, Gutman displays an encyclopedic understanding, not only of letters, libretti, Wagner's own vague scribblings (whether in support of revolution or a diet of vegetables), and other primary sources for a biography, but also of the political and intellectual context in which Wagner's life was played out. Nietzsche, Lizst, Kaiser Wilhelm, Metternich, the mistresses of the Jockey Club, Goethe, and Ulysses S. Grant march, leap, and slide effortlessly through these pages. Gutman's writing is lucid, rich, and spiced with urbane humor.

Thus, for example, Gutman writes that the failure of the first Bayreuth festival of 1876 apparently turned Wagner -- previously a romantic rebel and always a staunch atheist -- away from a belief in inevitable advance toward higher forms just as he was composing what he knew would be his final opera, Parsifal. The result was profoundly unchristian. "Monsalvat was Wagner's paranoiac concept of a small self-contained elite group, uniquely possessed of the truth, obsessed with its 'purity,' and struggling with an outside world it held worthless. Redemption was promised the hard-pressed knights, but, obviously, the Wagnerian redeemer was not to be found among Jewish craftsmen or lepers. Not by accident did Guernemanz almost immediately remark upon Parsifal's noble, highborn appearance. He knew what signs to read. Racial heredity and strict breeding, not natural selection, formed the new mechanism of salvation. Wagnerian eugenics had come into being; in his latest writing the composer had embraced the darker implications of Darwinism."

This book has a well-supported point-of-view. It is a great read.

I have been in software development for the past 20 years, from IBM mainframe to client/server environments. I needed to "get in" on the new technology. I created the development environment I thought was needed to make the most of this book. It carried me, step-by-step, through development methodology in client/server development. However, the web applicaton development portion of the book is sorely lacking in usable information. I found the guidance somewhat lacking in understandable instruction concerning development for web applications. The downloaded program listing doesn't compile correctly, because of a lack of a class. The class is developed in the book, but there are no instructions on how to incorporate the class. Also, SQL Server is used as a database, but no reference is made to it as necessary to create and run the listings in the book.

I have most of the better selling C# books on the market. That gives me a unique perspective. Among all of the books dealing with ADO.NET / C# data access, this one stands alone in showing the reader how to construct a Domain Object Model to hold data, and moreover how to use some of NET's more advances features like Reflection and Attributes to assist in the creation of this code. To me, the chapter outlining this process was worth the price of the book alone. Like I said, it is absolutely unique. Most writers, perhaps because of a lack of in-depth understanding, just rehash the ADO.NET Dataset concept. But you can do so much more with NET that anyone concerned with building a proper DAL would do themselves a dissservice if they skipped over "C# and the NET Framework".

This book is a good introduction to c# and .net. Unlike some c# books totally devoted to sytax, which is not a problem for c++/java programers, this one covers a lot of areas in .net applications using c#, such as windows form, web form and web service. But the book does not provide a deep insignt into .net. As some viewer said, "basic introduction...but enough to give the reader a taste".

The topic, "The C++ Perspective", in my opinion, doesn't make much sense. There are some minor errors in the book, but to correct them is not a problem.

To sum up, if you want to know a little more than tutorials, try this one; if you want to dig into .net framework, maybe Jeffrey's Applied MS .NET Framework Programming or some il books.

I find this book fairly understandable, easy to follow and a bit of interesting with good pictures!

If I took a class using this book as textbook, I will...

This is the most hardcore CS book I have ever set eyes upon. Topics covered in this book are postgraduate-level discussions of the type that allow us to make decisions about the computability of the most difficult problems that computers solve. If you can gain a clear understanding of concepts in this book you should easily be paid in excess of 100,000 annually. Learn and apply the techniques in this book and you might be in posession of the kind of mind that wins a Nobel prize.

This is a clearly written introduction to theoretical aspects of computer science. The first six chapters are devoted to the Chomsky hierarchy followed by chapters on computability, recursion theory and complexity. An energetic student may also want to consult Sipser, Kiesler, Papadimitiou, Gruska and/or Savage.