Invented Here: Maximizing Your Organization's Internal Growth and Profitability - Hardcover

Bart Victor is a professor of management and director of the program for executive development at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), Lausanne, Switzerland, and a professor of management in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Those who counsel individuals often first advise to "look within yourself" for answers. Similarly, the authors here suggest that most organizations already possess the internal resources necessary to succeed and grow. Victor and Boynton are both professors at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, and at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They argue that rather than adopt each passing management fad, companies should use the organizational knowledge they already have and should regularly assess their existing knowledge base to discover their own unique patterns of managing growth and satisfying customers. The authors assert that there are four organizational capabilities. These are craft work, mass production, process enhancement, and mass customization. Victor and Boynton detail the "knowledge and value propositions" associated with each of the four, and they explain how, after self-analysis, companies can plot the "right path" for moving from one capability--or type of work--to the next. Their ideas are supported by numerous examples resulting from work with the IBM Consulting Group. David Rouse