The Technology Leaders How America's Most Profitable High-Tech Companies Innovate Their Way to Success

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 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.