Books about the current business and new ventures

A new venture can look attractive on its own while quietly taking time, people and capacity from the business supporting it. The owner needs to understand more than whether the new offer has promise. There is also a question about how the existing operation and the exploration can coexist.

For that reading need, I would choose between an owner’s operating account, an argument about changing today’s business while creating a future one, and a study of organizing both kinds of work. These books share strategy territory, but each gives you a different question to pursue.

1. Infinite Upside — Vijay Sheth

   Start with what the expansion takes from the whole company. Chapter 13 considers a hypothetical trial using spare capacity in an existing operation. Its temporary cost structure differs from that of a separate location. The discussion also asks whether expansion would use experienced employees or management attention that had kept the original business dependable.

   That makes Infinite Upside my first recommendation here. A promising account for the new area can leave the owner needing to understand what the combined company would produce after the change.

   Imagine a business developing a new offer through its strongest service manager, who still carries responsibility for existing customers. The new project’s direct spending may be visible while the effect on current work is harder to see. This is an illustrative situation, not a further trial reported in the memoir.

   Read the book for that ownership question. The chapter’s trial is hypothetical; it does not establish that a new venture succeeded or teach an organizational innovation framework.

2. Dual Transformation — Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert and Mark W. Johnson

   Choose this to examine change in the existing business alongside new growth. The subtitle is How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future. Harvard Business Review Press’s 2017 description connects repositioning the present business with developing a new growth engine.

   This is the direction to investigate when the current business is more than a source of funding for the next project. It may need its own changes as the market evolves. That gives the fictional owner a broader reading question than how to lend a capable manager to the new offer.

   The transformation emphasis is also the tradeoff. Not every additional service is a response to major disruption, and the authors’ argument should not become a reason to make the undertaking larger than the problem warrants. Read for how the two business questions are connected. The publisher’s promises of stronger performance are not a verified result for your company.

3. Lead and Disrupt, second edition — Charles A. O’Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman

   Choose this for the organizational question of doing both kinds of work. The subtitle is How to Solve the Innovator’s Dilemma. The authors’ institutional publication records identify the 2021 second edition. In a public HBS discussion, Tushman describes the challenge of improving existing strategies while exploring new territory.

   That emphasis is useful when your question concerns the organization carrying the work. The fictional owner may recognize that current service and exploration ask different things of the same people. An intention to pursue both leaves that management question open.

   It overlaps with Dual Transformation. Choose between treatments rather than expect two independent tests of a solution. O’Reilly and Tushman offer the exploration-and-existing-business perspective; Anthony, Gilbert and Johnson emphasize the connected transformation of present and future business.

   The scale and circumstances of your organization still matter. Studying a way to pursue both does not establish that the fictional company has the resources to do so now.

Choose the present-and-future question

Begin with the combined operating effect, the need to change today’s business or the organization of exploration alongside existing work. If the company is mainly struggling with its present size, use the growth-strain selection. For representing a proposed business model, use the business-model selection.