Harold L. Sirkin

Harold L. "Hal" Sirkin (born 1959) is an American business consultant and author of books and articles about trends in innovation and global business competition.

Career

Sirkin writes a regular column entitled "Globality" for BusinessWeek.com and contributes to The New York Times Syndicate's "Global Business Perspectives column". He is the co-author of two books: Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation, which advises companies to adopt a systematic approach to innovation, and Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything, which explores strategies for economic competition under globality, the end state of globalization. Payback was named one of the "Best Innovation and Design Books for 2006" by BusinessWeek magazine. Globality was picked by The Economist as one of the best business books of 2008. Sirkin has also contributed to Time and the Harvard Business Review.

He is a senior partner in the Chicago office of the Boston Consulting Group, where he serves as global leader of the firm's Operations practice. Mr. Sirkin has co-authored several Boston Consulting Group reports including Capturing Global Advantage (2004) , Globalizing R&D: Knocking Down the Barriers (2005) , Globalizing R&D: Building a Pathway to Profits (2005) , The New Global Challengers (2006) , and The 2008 Top 100 New Global Challengers (2007).

He holds a B.S. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Bibliography

Books

• Sirkin, Harold L.; Hemerling, James W.; Bhattacharya, Arindam K; with John Butman (2008). Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything. New York: Business Plus: ISBN 0446178292
• Sirkin, Harold L.; Andrew, James P.; Butman, John (2007). Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press: ISBN 1422103137 ISBN 978-1422103135

Articles

• Sirkin, Harold and George Stalk. "Fix the Process, Not the Problem" Harvard Business Review July 1990 (subscription required for full text)
• Sirkin, Harold and James P. Andrew. "Innovating for Cash" Harvard Business Review September 2003 (subscription required for full text)
• Sirkin, Harold L., Perry Keenan and Alan Jackson. "The Hard Side of Change Management" Harvard Business Review October 2005 (subscription required for full text)
• Sirkin, Harold L. (October 16, 2008), "In the New World Disorder, Loads of Rivals for America", Time{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Harold L. Sirkin and James W. Hemerling (January 15, 2009). "Economy needs more than stimulus". Cleveland Plain Dealer.
• BusinessWeek.com Articles by Harold L. Sirkin

Reviews

Globality

The book was reviewed in Publishers Weekly and the New York Times.

This is a book for those who need to think about waking up to the global challenges rather than spending their time seeking protectionism and isolation. It is an enthusiastic book and one that supplies masses of examples. What if the world changes again and markets start to close down or regionalism becomes a basis for economic discrimination? This is not a question contemplated by the authors.

Being consultants, the authors have taken to the catchword “globality” like a duck to water and produced a reasonably readable book. Although it addresses essentially a western audience this book will, I suppose, have far more admiring readers in India since it panders to our nationalistic belief that India indeed is the international flavour of the 21st century!

Payback

Based on its own cost curve, however, the book should put readers ahead. The up-front investment is minimal, and there's little time expended from start to finish. There's also ample payback in being reminded that innovation is likely to be no more of a fix-all than management fads of the past.

Andrew and Sirkin believe that no organisation suffers from a lack of ideas. “Thousands of good ideas exist within every organisation, even those that don’t think of themselves as innovative.” However, these ideas are hardly put to proper use. “The real problem these companies have is how to turn their ideas into cash.” Sometimes, too many ideas are a problem, too.

See also

• Boston Consulting Group
• Globality

External links

• Globality (Boston Consulting Group website dedicated to the book by Sirkin et al.)
• Knowledge@Wharton. "Whether You Agree with Globality of Disagree, Don't Ignore It"." 20 Aug. 2008.
• Knowledge@Wharton. "'Globality': Why Companies Are Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything"." 20 Nov. 2008.
• The Economist. "Books of the Year"." 4 Dec. 2008.
• Competing With Everybody From Everywhere For Everything, Harold L. Sirkin, The Washington Post Online, November 3, 2008

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