Strategic Innovation: New Game Strategies for Competitive Advantage

In today’s fast-changing business environment, those firms that want to remain competitive must also be innovative. Innovation is not simply developing new technologies into new products or services, but in many cases finding new models for doing business in the face of change. It often entails changing the rules of the game.

From the late 1990s to today, the dominant themes in the strategy literature have been strategic innovation, the impact of information and communications technologies on commerce, and globalization. The primary issues have been and continue to be how to gain a competitive advantage through strategic innovation using new game strategies, and how to compete in a world with rapid technological change and increasing globalization. Strategic Innovation demonstrates to students how to create and appropriate value using these new game strategies. Beginning with a summary of the major strategic frameworks showing the origins of strategic innovation, Allan Afuah gives a thorough examination of contemporary strategy from an innovation standpoint with several key advantages:
focus on developing strategy in the face of change.
a wealth of quantitative examples of successful strategies, as well as descriptive cases.
emphasis on the analysis of strategy, not just descriptions of strategies.
a detailed, change-inclusive framework for assessing the profitability potential of a strategy or product, the AVAC (activities, value, appropriability, and change) model.
emphasis on the aspects of strategy that can be linked to the determinants of profitability.
consideration of how both for-profit and non-profit organizations can benefit from new game strategies.

Review

"Strategic Innovation features a very useable general framework for strategy analysis AND a comprehensive discussion of entrepreneurial new games, written by a world-class expert in these topics. While containing a cutting edge synthesis of the best ideas, this book is written at a level that can be understood and applied by business students."

–Vance Fried, Oklahoma State University


"Although it was Joseph Schumpeter who taught us that innovation is the engine of growth in free-market economies, it is Allan Afuah who teaches us how to achieve competitive advantage through strategic innovation."
–Frank T. Rothaermel, Sloan Industry Studies Fellow and The Deedy Associate Professor of Strategy, Georgia Institute of Technology


"This book will be the key reference for students of management interested in how to change the rules of the game. Through clear exposition and relevant, well-written cases, Allan Afuah guides the reader through the opportunities and threats of strategic innovation."
–Christopher Tucci, Chair of Corporate Strategy & Innovation, EPFL


Strategic Innovation features a very useable general framework for strategy analysis AND a comprehensive discussion of entrepreneurial new games, written by a world-class expert in these topics. While containing a cutting edge synthesis of the best ideas, this book is written at a level that can be understood and applied by business students.
–Vance Fried, Oklahoma State University