Survival of the Smartest: Managing Information for Rapid Action and World-Class Performance

Drawing on the innovative concept of Organizational IQ and a study of companies in seventeen countries, Survival of the Smartest charts a course for managers to follow into the twenty first century.

At the heart of the book is the authors' assessment tool of an organization's future health, which they call Organizational IQ. It measures a company's ability to quickly process information and make effective decisions. As industry clockspeeds accelerate everywhere, a high IQ has become a prerequisite for survival. Low IQ companies that the authors studied, on the other hand, have already vanished.

Case studies form Hewlett-Packard, British Petroleum, Sun Microsystems and Chrysler, among others, illustrate how companies can improve their Organizational IQ. How did Hewlett-Packard become the dominant player in printing? How did British Petroleum transform itself from a stodgy behemoth into the most agile and competitive player in the oil industry? How did Chrysler rise from the brink of bankruptcy to become the auto industry's prized asset?

In these companies, technology by itself only played a secondary role: to be successful, the entire organization had to become smarter. The authors show how key strategic decisions turned around these companies' Organizational IQ-and with it, their fortunes. A detailed company case study takes you in slow motion through the different steps you can take to improve the IQ or you own organization.

Survival of the Smartest offers a rare blend of a coherent framework, in-depth company case studies, a sound research base, and a detailed, step-by-step implementation example. Based on a landmark study of 164 organizations worldwide, conducted as part of a partnership between Stanford University, McKinsey & Company and the University of Augsburg, Organizational IQ is proving to be the acid test for the success or failure of companies around the world.

Haim Mendelson, PhD, is the James Irwin Miller Professor of Information Systems at the Stanford Business School, leader of the Technology, Organizations, and Markets area at the Stanford Computer Industry Project, co-director of the Stanford Executive Program on Strategic Uses of Information Technology, and a consultant to leading high-tech firms and financial institutions.

Johannes Ziegler, PhD, is the cofounder of Synesis Management Consulting. Synesis helps senior executives in leading high-tech companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, 3Com, and Intuit, to measure and improve their Organizational IQs. Before founding Synesis, Dr. Ziegler was a consultant with McKinsey & Company.