Vijay Govindarajan - The Three-Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation

Govindarajan is a master of taking the complicated and making it simple. Do not underestimate the power of the three-box model. It applies universally to businesses small and mega. A common language within an organization can mean the difference between success and failure. Read this and incorporate it into your DNA. You will be a winner.

BILL ACHTMEYER, founder, Parthenon; Senior Managing Director, Parthenon-EY

As in Govindarajans other books that I have read, The Three-Box Solution takes what can be a complex set of issues and simplifies them into a very crisp and thorough thought process. It provides a sound framework for thinking about how your organization is doing and whether you are taking the necessary steps to ensure relevancy in the future. This book is worth reading more than once; I highly recommend it.

SAMUEL R. ALLEN, Chairman and CEO, Deere & Company

Interesting read! The examples provide a practical view on how companies have utilized three-box thinking, focusing on the core while creating the future through linear and nonlinear innovation. This concept has influenced my thinking and approach to augmenting the core of our business and investing in the future.

MAHESH AMALEAN, Chairman and cofounder, MAS Holdings

The Three-Box Solution is a simple, elegant, yet powerful way of addressing the future. While the book codifies practices from successful examples, it is the ambition and passion of the leader to grow despite challenges that provide the horsepower for change. As the book beautifully brings out, the passionate leader does not wait for a crisis to create the future. It is part of his or her daily management discipline.

T. K. BALAJI, Managing Director, Lucas-TVS Limited

The Three-Box Solution offers a deeply practical and instructive framework to help businesses confront one of the key challenges in the global marketplace: how to innovate and grow in a sustained way. Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching, writing, and consulting, Govindarajan provides a winning combination of strategic insights and actionable steps designed to help virtually any business or organization build a better future.

AJAY BANGA, President and CEO, MasterCard Inc.

It is very refreshing to read The Three-Box Solution because of both its relevance and its simplicity. As you read the book, you connect with events in your own journey as you grapple simultaneously with ideas such as learning from the past, living in the present, and dreaming about the future. The simplicity of Govindarajans model, like all great ideas, triggers you to think, Hey, why did I not think about it this way? I recommend this book and its approach to both current and aspiring CEOs. Business schools will also find this approach worthy of teaching, and chief strategy officers will find it most useful.

BHASKAR BHAT, CEO, Titan Watch

CEOs and boards increasingly struggle with the need to be ready for the future and yet to perform while you transform. At last, there is a road map that gives concrete terms for how to do this systematically and successfully.

RAMA BIJAPURKAR, bestselling author; management consultant; and board member

The Three-Box Solution brilliantly tackles the challenges of a successful company to continually drive the linear innovation essential for todays operational excellence, while nurturing the nonlinear innovation necessary to create the companys future. In describing how to escape the insidious traps of the past, the book clearly articulates how companies can leverage todays strengths while building the capabilities needed to execute their vision for the future.

Govindarajans thirty years of passion and experience effectively help us identify the leadership behaviors, processes, and metrics that companies seeking to adopt balanced Three-Box Solutions need, and how this approach can create the change-ready culture required for sustainable leadership in rapidly evolving industries.

As the leader of a very successful company that operates in a rapidly changing marketplace, I will be able to leverage many of the three-box balance principles as I drive our future agenda.

GIOVANNI CAFORIO, CEO, Bristol-Myers Squibb

The Three-Box Solution is essential reading for any senior executive leading a successful company with a proud history. Govindarajan gives a clear path for how to create the environment and culture within a company to foster innovation that will make a difference in ensuring a bright future for an organization.

Govindarajan trains our senior executives at Thermo Fisher Scientific; our teams practice what he preaches.

MARC CASPER, President and CEO, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

In The Three-Box Solution, Govindarajan offers a compelling framework for driving innovation while delivering current goals, without the constraints of past successes and failures. With powerful, international examples, he offers a clear guide to creating the sustainable, innovation culture needed to stay ahead.

IAN COOK, Chairman, President, and CEO, Colgate-Palmolive Company

At Thinkers50, we are passionate about the very best in management thinking. Govindarajan is a Thinkers50 Award winner and one of our highest-ranked business thinkers. The Three-Box Solution proves why: important ideas, accessibly presented, and practical.

STUART CRAINER and DES DEARLOVE, founders, Thinkers50

What a compelling piece of workand its genius is in its simplicity. Leaders at all levels of the organization should find the three-box model for innovation a how-to manual for success.

ALEXANDER M. CUTLER, Chairman and CEO, Eaton Corporation

The Three-Box Solution is an extremely stimulating, encouraging, valuable, and enjoyable read.

Ive spent more than a decade leading and shaping organizations using a systemic, future-back approach to drive performance today and consciously choosing what from the past serves the future (and what doesnt). Govindarajan brings to life so many real examples of how other organizations are using this approach, framing it in the context of the simple, but hugely powerful three-box model. I was struck by the Hindu roots of the thinking, which added huge power and validity to the model.

The books structure is also very helpful, with a few focused chapters and rich, highly relevant case studies bringing the key points to life in a practical and vivid way. The takeaways at the ends of chapters were extremely valuable, focusing the whole work on real-life application rather than theoretical strategy.

STUART FLETCHER, CEO, Bupa

Adequately balancing todays urgencies with tomorrows challenges is at the heart of every companys mission. However, we all know that accomplishing this goal is easier said than done. The Three-Box Solution offers a simple but powerful framework guiding leaders to act swiftly and thoughtfully in the present while remaining vigilant regarding the challenges of the future. It offers pragmatic tools to help companies make those hard choices necessary to deliver sustainable results.

RODRIGO CALVO GALINDO, President and CEO, Kroton Educacional

Leaders must continuously attend to Box 1, Box 2, and Box 3. Govindarajan offers a simple but powerful framework to achieve three-box balance. Managers at all levels within the Godrej Group will find his ideas extremely valuable.

ADI GODREJ, Chairman, Godrej Industries

The unprecedented pace of change in todays business environment necessitates nimble, brave, frame-breaking thinking to ensure significant and enduring success. A longtime mentor to Hasbro, Govindarajan offers a simple yet profound Three-Box Solution that has inspired our teams to create a culture of innovation, challenge the trappings of the past, and create our future. In