January 2003
On the cover of Outlook, there is a tag line under the masthead that sums up our editorial mission: "The journal of ideas at work." In each issue, we assemble a group of articles and interviews that advance ideas that are not only new and provocative. They are also ready to be put to work making organizations more innovative, effective and efficient, an exercise that goes to the heart of what Accenture does in partnership with its clients.
But exactly how does this work? How do breakthrough business concepts—reengineering or total quality management, to cite two important examples—go from theory into practice? Can we identify the process by which business and management ideas enter organizations? These were questions addressed in March 2001 during a project undertaken by Tom Davenport, director of the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, his colleague James Wilson, and independent researcher and management expert Laurence Prusak.
"We soon realized," recalls Wilson, "that a high-level study of business ideas would be incomplete without a real sense of who actually makes these ideas happen." So the team began to focus on what they call "idea practitioners."
Their conclusion after a year and half of research: Ideas that have the greatest impact are those championed and implemented by a distinct, self-selected subset of managers and executives inside organizations, throughout both the private and public sectors, who share a similar methodology and techniques and who rely on the same best practices and narratives. (The results of this project, What’s the Big Idea? will be published later this year by Harvard Business School Press.)
There was another layer to this story: the ideas themselves. In the course of their work, Davenport, Wilson and Prusak also studied the impact of the so-called business gurus who sometimes provide the inspiration for the idea practitioners. And this, in turn, led them to create what we believe is the first objective, quantitative ranking of business intellectuals. They have shared their findings with us, which we have published in this issue.
In business, of course, gurus have no monopoly on ideas, which can come from many sources—from inside organizations, for example, or through collaboration with outside partners like Accenture. What is most important, however, is that the best ideas are identified, nurtured and, ultimately, put to work.
David Cudaback
Editor-in-Chief
Back to Contents
To Top