Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations

  • 3h 55m
  • Michael J. Arena
  • McGraw-Hill
  • 2018

Lack of Agility is the kiss of death. Position your company to succeed in world of change.

To edge out the competition in today’s disruptive environment, you need to ensure that your company is agile—that it can respond to change instantly and effectively. Because fast and furious change is the only thing you can count on in business today.

Network expert Michael Arena helped enable GM’s legendary turnaround. In these pages, he explains how you can transform your own company through the concept of adaptive space.

Based on hundreds of interviews and the author’s own groundbreaking study of dozens of organizations spanning a variety of industries, Adaptive Space shows how to position your company for today—and for the future—by enabling creativity, innovation, and novel ideas to flow freely among teams, across departments, and throughout the company.

Using GM as the main case study—along with the stories of other highly adaptive organizations, like Apple, Amazon, Disney, and Gore—Arena provides a model you can follow to reinvent your company. It’s about inspiring employees to explore new ideas, empowering the most creative people and teams to spread their ideas across the organization, and operationalizing the entrepreneurial spirit so adaptability is set in stone.

Hesitation is a killer in today’s business landscape. With Adaptive Space, you have everything you need to confront disruption with smart, confident actions and seize the valuable opportunities that come with change.

About the Author

Michael J. Arena, PhD, Chief Talent Officer of GM, has helped enable the company’s ongoing transformation. Winner of the 2017 Walker Prize from People + Strategy, whose work has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Business Insider, Sloan Management Review, and Chief Executive Magazine. Arena has served as a visiting scientist at MIT. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and is a coach at the Stanford dSchool.

In this Book

  • Foreword
  • Chapter 1: The Need for Adaptive Space
  • Chapter 2: Discovery Connections of Brokers
  • Chapter 3: Development Interactions of Connectors
  • Chapter 4: Diffusion Connections of Energizers
  • Chapter 5: Disruptive Connections of Challengers
  • Chapter 6: Engage the Edges
  • Chapter 7: Find a Friend
  • Chapter 8: Follow the Energy
  • Chapter 9: Embrace the Conflict
  • Chapter 10: Close the Network
  • Research Summary
  • Notes
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