Once companies fall into what Hartung calls the "Defend and Extend" mindset, only seven percent will ever grow consistently again, and fifty-five percent will remain in permanent decline. Yet academia keeps teaching the "basics" that will repeat this formula for failure.
Businesspeople, who ought to be more practical than academia, are just as blind. Hartung gives many examples in which companies sabotage new thinking and approaches through management indifference or hostility, by organizing new projects for failure, by hamstringing resources, and by outright "cooking" of financial analysis to reconfirm that it is more sensible to continue a weak or failing strategy than to take a risk on something new.
Hartung does more than critique the status quo or describe the many subtle techniques of the "Status Quo Police". He also provides many examples of companies from multiple fields that have broken away from locked-in thinking.
This book is replete with examples of companies that not only disrupted their own business but redefined entire markets. He takes the additional, and usually overlooked step, of how companies can bring along their customers, who are also locked in to the old way of doing things on the successful journey moving ahead.
Hartung, Adam: - "For 8 years, Adam was the No. 1 Leadership columnist for Forbes.com with over 50 million readers. He also wrote the Strategy & Leadership column for CIO Magazine for 7 years, and he has been a contributing editor for the International Journal of Innovation Science. His columns boldly predicted the success of industry changers like Netflix, Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Tesla. As well as the negative impact these disruptors had on former leaders like Sears, Tribune, Research in Motion - and many others who were unable (or unwilling) to adapt. He predicted the decline of bitcoin and the dominance of FAANG investing. Adam's accurate forecasts about market shifting trends and his predictions for industry leading corporations has made him a frequent press interviewee regarding top tech companies, as well as the automobile, media and retail industry leaders. His insights into business growth and overcoming organizational obstacles have been featured in over 600 journals, including such notables as Inc, Adweek, Fortune, Washington Times - and multiple radio and television interviews. Adam is CEO and Managing Partner of Spark Partners, a strategy and transformation consultancy and was the founding CEO of Soparfilm Energy, a corporation that invested early in fracking for oil and gas production. Additionally, Adam has been on the Board of Directors at several successful privately held companies. Adam is a Certified Board Leadership Fellow by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) where he is a regular speaker, and he is a certified financial expert by the SEC. Adam was formerly a successful entrepreneur, an executive with PepsiCo and DuPont, and is a Boston Consulting Group alum. He now travels globally giving keynotes, leading strategy and innovation management workshops, and coaching executives and boards on how to increase their success."
