Book Review the Future of Management

If you do not know Gary Hamel or Bill Breen you should. Gary Hamel is a graduate of the School of Business at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. For this reason it is not a surprise that he was also the graduation speaker at Andrews in May of 2008. What may be more surprising to some of our readers is that he is also one of the world’s most renowned management experts. The Wall Street Journal of May 5, 2008, listed him as #1, ahead of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. Hamel hones his theories as Visiting Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School, as the director of the Management Innovation Lab and as an international consultant to a wide variety of organizations and corporations. Bill Breen is the founding senior editor of Fast Company, the must-read magazine for many leaders trying to stay in touch with new ideas in leadership, strategy, innovation, and design. The Future of Management shifts a paradigm-changing innovation focus on management itself. For many people innovation means, above all, new products. The current pace of product innovation is overwhelming. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in 2005 alone there were 1.6 million new patent applications worldwide (WIPO Report, 2007). Products not even in existence a few years ago are now shaping the way we live, work, and think. My iPod allows me to carry a collection of music and audio books with me at all times. My laptop gives me access to my aggregated academic work for the last 20 plus years. The Internet allows me instant access to the work of others and to inexhaustible resources that used to be locked up in physical libraries. But as I am writing this paragraph, my son smiles about my glowing admiration of the innovations of yesterday. He has a second generation iPhone. Do I have to explain more? Innovation can also mean new ways of structuring work. A few days ago I participated in the meeting of “Quantum Leap,” a virtual learning group of global leaders in the Andrews University Leadership Program. The eight participants were scattered across three continents, from Hong Kong to Mumbai (India), from Berrien Springs (Michigan) to Berlin (Germany), and from sunny Loma Linda (California) to the plains of Alberta,