Why innovation uber-guru has written a parable

'How Stella Saved the Farm'

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-01-18/news/36415630_1_deirdreinnovation-chris-trimble

A young sheep named Stella takes off on a holiday after graduating school, hiking on the Inca
trail in Peru, where she meets a handsome alpaca named Alejandro.
The two woolly animals have a whirlwind romance, thereby setting the stage for How Stella
Saved the Farm, the new novella from Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble of Tuck School of
Business at Dartmouth. But this is no Mills & Boon romance.

Taking inspiration from George Orwell's Animal Farm and Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter
of Harvard Business School, Govindarajan and Trimble have written a parable about managing
innovation in organisations - a subject they've been researching for the past decade.
"We wanted something that would be short, fun to read, with a serious message," says
Govindarajan. "By using animals as characters, we've made it into a fantasy, which makes it fun
to read. They think it's remote from their world, so they let their guard down and enjoy it. But
then they begin to recognize the characters as people they know."
Stella returns from Peru to her life in Windsor Farms, just in time to attend a meeting called by
the CEO, a mare named Deirdre, who has recently taken over the reins from her father.
Deirdre's grandfather pioneered the concept of animal-owned farms when he took over the
operations of the farm after the original owners, the Windsors, abandoned it.

Now Windsor produces commodity products like wool, milk and grains, whose prices are
dropping steadily. Though it is a tightly run operation, with the highest productivity levels,
Windsor is under severe pressure from the larger mechanized farms run by humans, especially
the one owned by its neighbour, McGillicuddy, who has already offered to buy Deirdre out.
Two weeks ago, Deirdre launched a contest, a 'big idea hunt' for the future of the farm, where all
the animals had been invited to come up with new business ideas. On the day Stella returns, 40
teams are presenting their ideas. She hears Maisie, the farms's trendy Holstein, propose the
idea of creating a magazine, Bovine Style, featuring trends in luxury fashion.
This sets Stella's own mind whirring and she impulsively makes a suggestion of her own that
Windsor get into the business of luxury wool, the kind produced by Peru's alpaca. This
innovative idea, brought on by exposure to new animals and places, is just a start. It sets into
motion a chain of events at Windsor Farms that illustrate the many problems of executing
innovation.
How Stella Saved the Farmis set to hit the bookstores in March. Meanwhile, Govindarajan has
been using it in conducting oneday corporate workshops, where it has proved to be a hit. "It's
great for stimulating open and non-defensive conversations about what it really takes to make
innovation happen. We can sharply focus on the key innovation lessons in a parable. Real life
cases tend to be too detailed and messy and one company does not illustrate all the lessons,"
he says.
One of the familiar characters in the book is Bull, Windsor's COO and Deirdre's secondincommand. He's an old timer who was bypassed when Marcus promoted Deirdre to CEO there's
much uncertainly as to whether he will remain loyal to Windsor or move on. Bull is resistant to
the very idea of a new business and believes the solution to Windsor's problem lies in further
improving the productivity of the existing business.
But Deirdre needs his co-operation in getting the new business off the ground, for resources
must be shared between the old and new businesses.
For starters, Deirdre and Bull need to decide on who will be in charge of the new business.
Stella herself is just out of school and in no position to lead. They pick Mav (short for Maverick),
a confident, energetic middlemanagement stallion who has no respect for tradition. Mav is to
report to Rambo, the head of ovine operations, who reports to Bull.

Mav hits a wall as soon as he starts setting up the new business the purchase head won't
okay the high salaries of the alpaca and Maisie can't spare time to work on a marketing
brochure. Deirdre realizes that one leader can't make innovation happen Mav needs his own
full-time team and he needs to report directly to the CEO. Though he's named the book after
Stella, Govindarajan makes it clear that she's not necessarily the one who really saved the farm.
"In the real world, there's always this glamour associated with idea generation," he says.
"People tend to celebrate the Stellas, leaving out the many people who spend long hours
making the idea happen. Execution is considered a grind, leading innovation to fail in many
companies." The challenges to executing the luxury wool project are many.
First, when the herd of alpacas arrives from Peru, they culture-clash with the sheep. Second,
the farm's yarn making process doesn't work with alpaca wool because the length of the fibres
varies according to which part of the animal it comes from. Luxury wool, it turns out, isn't a bulk
process but one that requires constant resetting of machinery to produce gradations.
One reason the senior management chose Stella's idea over the many others was that it
seemed to require the least investment. But now it's necessary to spend on leasing a new
grazing ground and dedicated machinery for alpaca wool. That's not all. Deirdre also realizes
she needs to recruit expensive managerial talent at senior levels with luxury wool experience.
How Stella Saved the Farm is about the lessons that Windsor Farm learns about making
innovation happen that sharing existing resources works only to a point, that conflicts
between the old and new are inevitable, that building a dedicated team for a totally new
business is like building a different company and like all good CEOs, Deirdre makes time to
read up on the subject.
Though they are not specifically mentioned, Govindarajan & Trimble's The Other Side of
Innovation: Solving the Execution Challengewould be on her list.
In many ways, the Stella story is a condensed version of The Other Side of Innovation, which is
all of 240 pages long, without animal illustrations. This research link, says Govindarajan, is what
differentiates it from books like Who Moved My Cheese?, which are not backed by academic
rigor.
"The Stella parable is based on research into real world companies it is a composite of
dozens of case studies we wrote over a ten year period. Every detail in Stella is based on real
experiences of real organisations," he says.
The last chapters of the book are reserved for one of the most difficult issues concerning
innovation how do you evaluate performance and appraise those responsible for it? By the
end of the book, the luxury wool business is still consuming more cash than it is generating. The
investments made are beginning to show results, but the animals are very resentful of the way
the luxury wool operation is draining the reserves created by the old business.
But as Windsor's research chief, Einstein the rooster, explains, "Profits come second in an
innovative business learning comes first. The innovation leader has to be evaluated on
whether he has executed a disciplined experiment and learnt from it." Why don't more
academicians write easyto-read parables for a wider audience? The process seems easy
enough: do research, publish in a journal, write a book and follow it up with a simplified story
destined to be a best-seller.
"It's actually very difficult," says Govindarajan. "Academics are not equipped to write parables.
The American university system requires us to write in academic journals, which is very
different. To write a fable with believable characters, you need to be grounded in the world of

management practice, which I have been, through my consulting work. And fortunately, I have a
great collaborator in Chris, who is not a full-time academic."
How Stella Saved the Farm ends happily, with the luxury wool business growing explosively.
When McGillicuddy makes another offer for her farm, Deirdre rejects it in no uncertain terms.
The Stella-Alejandro romance however, doesn't survive the test of time and distance, which
might disappoint some Indian readers.
By the conclusion to the book, Stella has a new sheep-friend in Michael, who lives in another
animal owned farm nearby.