Reinventing Giants - by Bill Fischer & Umberto Lago & Fang Liu (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Chinese firms are reinventing their business models, their corporate cultures, and themselves, becoming global competitors who increasingly offer knowledge rather than cheap labour in their quest to join the ranks of the "world's best" companies. This book offers a compelling profile of the most ambitious of these emerging Chinese competitors, the Haier Corporation (the world's largest manufacturer of home appliances), and shares insights on how one organization has repeatedly reinvented its business model and corporate culture in an effort to sustain its success.

Reinventing Giants provides an exclusive look within the Haier Corporation and shows how managerial accountability and responsibility have been repositioned at every level of the organization, with the core value of market-centricity, while aligning strategy on each level of management. It includes actual work reports that show this process in detail from the ground up. The authors emphasize how a belief in the liberation of employee talent has consistently been the driving force underlying Haier's success.

• Includes the remarkable story of Haier's turnaround and how these lessons can be applied to other organizations
• Contains information for any company grappling with competition in the global marketplace
• Shows how to liberate employees' talent to drive business success
• Written by Bill Fischer, Professor of Innovation Management at IMD in Switzerland, Umberto Lago, Professor of Management at Bologna University, Italy, and Fang Liu, Research Associate of IMD

Reinventing Giants helps global managers rethink their own business models and accompanying corporate cultures in order to be able to apply Haier's lessons directly to their own organizations.

From the Back Cover

Forward-thinking Chinese companies are reinventing their business models, their corporate cultures, and themselves to become global competitors who offer knowledge rather than cheap labor in their quest to join the ranks of the "world's best" companies.

Reinventing Giants offers a behind-the-scenes profile of one of the most ambitious of these emerging Chinese competitors, the Haier Group--the world's largest manufacturer of home appliances. The book reveals how Haier has repeatedly reinvented its business model and corporate culture in an effort to sustain its success. Haier's success is not about impulsiveness, nor naive philosophical longings, but about ambitious aspirations, strong inspirational leadership, careful strategic observation, detailed adjustments of managerial choices, and abundant trust in the power of employees to really take command of an organization's fate. The authors demonstrate how a giant company of 80,000 employees transformed itself by embracing the contradictions of being simultaneously structured yet entrepreneurial, disciplined yet flexible, tactical yet strategic.

Reinventing Giants offers the critical information, lessons learned, and a substantive model for transforming any company grappling with competition in the global marketplace. The book shows how Haier's managerial accountability and responsibility have been -repositioned at every level in the organization, while maintaining the core value of market-centricity. The authors include actual work reports in order to describe this process in detail from the ground up and emphasize how a belief in the liberation of employee talent has consistently been the driving force underlying Haier's success.

Using Reinventing Giants as a guide, any organization can learn what it takes to open, sustain, and revitalize new markets on a global stage.

About the Author

Bill Fischer is a professor of innovation management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Formerly he was executive president and dean of the China-Europe International Business School in Shanghai and the Dalton L. McMichael Sr. Professor of Business at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He writes The Ideas Business blog for Forbes.com.

Umberto Lago is associate professor of Management at Bologna University in Italy. He has been, at different stages of his life (often simultaneously): a university professor, private and public manager, entrepreneur, and consultant. He is a member of UEFA Club Financial Control Body.

Fang Liu is a research associate at IMD. Her research focuses on fields such as management innovation, marketing, and global business.