The Technology Leaders

Follow America's High-Tech Leaders to Sustained Growth and Profitability

?With forceful and engaging style, Cohan describes what makes technology companies like Hewlett-Packard so successful....Any executive aspiring to market leadership should read The Technology Leaders.?
-- Dean O. Morton, retired executive vice president, COO and director, Hewlett-Packard Company

As organizations emerge from an era of epochal downsizing, managers are beginning to realize that repeated cost-cutting is no longer the path to sustained profitable growth. Clearly, a new strategy is called for. In this landmark work, Peter Cohan details the practices of today's most vital, prosperous companies -- America's high-tech leaders -- and demonstrates how other companies can follow their remarkable example and thrive in a hypercompetitive marketplace driven by rapid product innovation. PrefaceThe Author
1. The Technology Leaders and Their Sources of Advantage:- The dynamics of technology-intesive industries- Implications of CEOs, chief technology officers, and others- Twenty technolgy leaders- Four sources of advantage that drive leaders' success- Linkage with return innovation
2. Entrepreneurial Leadership- Effective leadership- Winning culture- Topteam players- Decentralized decision making- Entrepreneurial incentives- CEO change agAnda
3. Open Technology I: Managing the Core- Indentify core technologies- Value core technologies- Focus on leverage-point technologies- Partner or acquire to close the capability gap- CEO change agAnda
4. Open Technology II: Syndicating the Noncore- Indentifying noncore technologies- Syndicating noncore technologies: Outplacing- Syndicating noncore technologies: Outsourcing- Managing external partnerships
5. Boundryless Product Dvelopment I: Running Fast Teams- Building cross-functional teams- Deploying project plans- Involving early adopters- Using prototypes- Product supply- CEO change AgAnda
6. Boundryless Product Development II: Creating Product Development- The value triangle- Understanding customer needs- Choosing product attributes- Managing technologies and other capabilities- Connecting the corners of the value triangle: An example from 3Com
7. Disciplined Resource Allocaton- Principles of betting on R&D- A method for managing the R&D portfolio- Capture portfolio learning- Construct portfolio grids- Develop phased project plans- Estimate cash flows- Build project decision trees- Calculate portfolio value- Manage resource allocation- Conclusion
8. The Innovation Scorecard- Return on Innovation- Leadership- Technology- Product development- Resource allocation- CEO change agAnda
9. Thoughts About the Future- General business landscape
ReferencesIndex ?Peter Cohan has managed to look beyond the trAnds and fads that steer so many consultants and business observers and capture a fundamental fact: Understanding your customers and quickly responding to their changing needs with real value is the most essential ingredient of long-term business success. Nowhere is this more evident today than among the companies that have become leaders in our most technology-intensive industries. The Technology Leaders explores the reasons these companies have risen above the crowd in the world's most intensely competitive markets.? --Michael C. Ruettgers, president and CEO, EMC Corporation

?Hey, business executives! Wake up! Stop the off-site planning meetings, tear up the strategic plan, and buy everyone in your company a copy of this book. With Cohan's crisp description of the ?success cycle' and his cold slap-in-the-face reality of ?betting under uncertainty,' you'll rethink every decision after you put down this page-turner.? --Kevin R. Compton, general partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

?With a forceful and engaging style, Cohan describes what makes technology companies like Hewlett-Packard so successful. The book is full of practical insights illustrated with fresh examples. Any executive aspiring to market leadership should read The Technology Leaders.? --Dean O. Morton, retired executive vice president, COO and director, Hewlett Packard Company

?Peter Cohan has created a powerful tool for anyone working in the arena of creating great products from technology. By carefully dissecting the approaches taken by a wide series of strong and successful companies, he has distilled a great deal of useful wisdom. I enthusiastically recommAnd this new addition to the entrepreneurial literature.? --Robert J. Saldich, former president and CEO, Raychem Corporation

?Peter Cohan is an outstanding manager with a keen eye for value. His book gets behind the numbers of some of America's most profitable high-tech companies. With a clear and engaging style, he presents a framework that investors can use to pan for gold in today's flood of high-tech investment opportunities. If you want to pick tomorrow's winners, read this book!? --Peter S. Laino, director of development, K-III Communications Corporation PETER S. COHAN is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting firm headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Specializing in both strategy and investment consulting, his clients include global leaders in the telecommunications, on-line information services, computer networking, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and oil services industries. Cohan received his MBA degree from the Wharton School. After a decade of downsizing and restructuring, most American businesses have cut about all the costs they can. Managers are coming to realize that from now on long-term health will depAnd on growth achieved through competitive, rapid-fire product innovation and the successful market entry of those products. But many lack the expertise to put their organizations on that golden path to success.Fortunately, there are a number of companies that can point the way?companies that excel in innovation and realize remarkable growth and profits as a result. They are the technology leaders, and in this thoroughly researched work, author Peter Cohan shares their strategies for success and provides practical guidance to those in other industries who strive to build companies that can compete and win in today's high-growth markets.Drawing on more than fifteen years of consulting experience?and on in-depth interviews with top executives and analysts?Cohan takes an up-close look at twenty of America's leading high-tech companies. Using lively examples from such forward-thinking corporations as 3M, Microsoft, Merck, and Hewlett-Packard, he reveals how these giants ?innovate their way to success? through the fast-cycle introduction of products that captivate customers, penetrate markets, and generate capital and insight in ways that lead to ever-expanding levels of innovation and achievement.In no-nonsense language, Cohan explores the mental models that enable technology leaders to adapt to rapidly changing markets?assets that set these leaders above competitors. He outlines and explains a framework for success based on the four sources of advantage that drive their superior performance: entrepreneurial leadership, open technology, boundaryless product development, and disciplined resource allocation. He details new ways to structure and manage organizations, processes, and alliances so businesses can increase their levels of innovation and get competitive products to market As organizations emerge from an era of epochal downsizing, managers are beginning to realize that repeated cost-cutting is no longer the path to sustained profitable growth. In this landmark work, Peter Cohan details the practices of today's most vital, prosperous companies?America's high-tech leaders?and demonstrates how others can follow their remarkable example and thrive in a hypercompetitive marketplace driven by rapid product innovation.