Each year, Professor Gerard J. Tellis (USC) visits Erasmus School of Economics, where he is hosted by the Marketing group. Recently, Professor Tellis has published a book, titled Unrelenting Innovation: How to Build a Culture for Market Dominance. This book showcases some of the joint ideas he worked on with various people from our Marketing group.
Gerard Tellis is a noted expert on innovation, advertising, and global markets, makes the compelling case that the culture of a firm is the crucial driver of an organization's innovativeness. In this groundbreaking book he describes the three traits and three practices necessary to create a culture of relentless innovation. Organizations must be willing to cannibalize successful products, embrace risk, and focus on the future. Organizations build these traits by providing incentives for enterprise, empowering product champions, and encouraging internal markets.
Spelling out the critical role of culture, Gerard Tellis provides illustrative examples of organizations with winning cultures and explores the theory and evidence for each of the six components of culture. The book concludes with a discussion of why culture is superior to alternate theories for fostering innovation.
The Marketing Group at Erasmus School of Economics is extremely successful. It is the 3rd best group in Europe according to the number of publications in top journals in marketing. Group members have been editors of prestigious journals, prolific scholars (some of them even among the top 5 in the world), and well-connected professionals, at all levels from Assistant, over Associate to Full Professor.