Winning Innovation: How Innovation Excellence Propels an Industry Icon Toward Sustained Prosperity

Davanti Nella Gara, an Italian bicycle company, makes the best racing bikes in the world. But after decades of market dominance, competitors have brought the industry leader back to the Peloton. The company’s second-generation owner longs for retirement, but a tired product lineup is pushing down profits and the firm’s market value will never support his ride into the sunset. The flawed but beloved owner seeks out the counsel of an old friend and successful businessman, who steers him toward a fast and remarkable transformation, one fueled by a relentless focus on innovation excellence.

An engaging business novel, Winning Innovation dives into the art and science of innovation; the thrills of the European bike-racing circuit; the vibrant landscape and cuisine of Italy; and a cast of intriguing characters who work to put Davanti on the road to sustained prosperity. The company’s leader isn’t afraid to learn and apply new ideas to reenergize his company, and finds he cares more about his employees than he could ever imagine. A young innovator struggles to see a product idea to fruition as well as rise into management — and he falls in love along the way. A newly promoted R&D director brings teamwork and transparency to product development and aligns the entire company around innovation.

With the help of a seasoned and persistent change agent, in just a year, Davanti deploys a well-defined and -sequenced transformation — a complete and seamless process that can be replicated and scaled by most companies. The leader engages associates in pursuit of the right vision and strategy, candidly supporting them all as they unleash their creative sparks, work through personality conflicts, and take on real-world challenges faced by companies every day. They learn and apply traditional R&D principles in new ways (e.g., cost of delay, sprints, fail fast, late start) and successfully leverage emerging innovation and change-management principles (e.g., idea-creation events, knowledge management, workplace humility, visual management, lean project management). And an aligned, three-phase innovation process — from idea creation to technology development and product design — provides the innovation infrastructure the company needs for revenue creation and success beyond racing bikes.

From a top-heavy organization dominated by power struggles and finger-pointing emerges a new Davanti Nella Gara — a flattened, innovative company with:

• Clear vision and endorsed goals and strategy
• Speed, responsiveness, and agility
• Widespread, successful creativity
• Collaboration and teamwork
• Superior risk management
• Respect for people
• Unquestionable ethics
• Changed leadership and associate behaviors
• Project management excellence
• Rapid problem-solving and experimentation

Not just the story of an R&D transformation, Winning Innovation illustrates a companywide transformation of a magnitude that only superior R&D can make possible. It may well be the first book to chronologically introduce the principles for a complete innovation excellence transformation along with the parallel people transformation that is necessary for real change to occur. The end result for Davanti Nella Gara is a dominant new culture based on respect and humility, highly efficient processes that will deliver a wealth of innovations, sales, and profits for many years to come, and an owner who leaves a bright future for the people and company he’s known and loved his entire life.

Beginning in 2005, Norbert Majerus implemented a principles-based lean product development process at the three global innovation centers of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. For more than a decade he was Goodyear’s lean champion in research and development.

In 2016, Norbert published his first book, Lean-Driven Innovation, which received the Shingo Research Award. Also in 2016, with Norbert’s guidance the Goodyear R&D organization applied for and received the AME Excellence Award.

Norbert, born and raised in Luxembourg, has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from the Universitaet des Saarlandes, Saarbruecken, Germany, and worked most of the disciplines in the Goodyear innovation centers in Luxembourg and Akron.

Norbert has taught workshops and has given keynotes at many conferences in the United States and other countries. Since retiring from Goodyear in 2017, he continues to share his extensive lean expertise via Norbert Majerus consulting. He is a Shingo Academy Fellow, an AME assessor and serves on the board of LPPDE (Lean Product and Process Development Exchange).

George Taninecz has been studying and writing about process improvement for 30 years. He has authored articles and white papers for leading lean organizations — the Lean Enterprise Institute, Catalysis, Value Capture — and supported many of the world’s leading lean thinkers as a book editor and/or project manager. Many of the books on which Taninecz has worked have won a Shingo Award, most recently Lean-Driven Innovation by Norbert Majerus.

Taninecz’s background includes a decade at IndustryWeek magazine. During his tenure as the magazine’s managing editor, he was a director of America’s Best Plants program and launched numerous research initiatives for publication. After leaving IndustryWeek, he worked in knowledge development at McKinsey & Company as a communication specialist in the firm’s manufacturing practice. In 2003, Taninecz founded George Taninecz Inc. and works with clients to develop books, white papers, executive summaries, and articles on lean thinking and process improvement.

Since 2003, Taninecz also has served as the Vice President of Research at The MPI Group, where he develops research, benchmarking, and maturity-model tools and oversees the creation of thought leadership in a range of formats that explore industry trends and issues, management strategies, and principles, and operations practices and processes.