Rating: 
Summary: Talking to myself!
Review: This book is well written, logical and thought provoking. In looking at the other reviews of the book, I agree that it could have been condensed without loosing any of its content. My only discomfort with this book, and others representing leadership or revloutionary actions is that they are never written for truly small companies. By this I mean having say 5-20 employees and a turnover of $1,000,000. Much of what Gary has written about entrepreneures has been lost in the corporate structure of CEO's, CFO's, CIO's, Sales managers, Purchase managers, IT managers, HR managers and a host of other titles. When is someone going to acknowledge (and perhaps write a helpful book based upon) that a huge number of entrepreneures have, single-handed, all of these titles and jobs that go along with them to perform everyday! Its easy for me to mentally take a few zeros of the billion and trillion figures and make them more realistic for my own company, but its not so easy to have a meeting with my CEO, CFO, CIO and several other managers, I would only be talking to myself.
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Summary: Good Book: Just Don¿t Try To Do Anything With It
Review: If you've followed and loved any of Hamel's previous works, you'll find that "Leading the Revolution" is for you. It's well-written, lovely to look at, and he does two things very well: 1) Takes complicated business issues and packages them clearly and neatly with his own brand of consultant-speak. (e.g., Focusing on "bridge" components to tie all your challenges together.) 2) If you work for Just-Don't-Get-It BiggieCorp, he provides an innovation call-to-arms. You can quote Hamel to scare the bejeebers out of your boss. But if you want to actually implement any of his ideas, look elsewhere. There is zero help in how to embrace his revolution. My suggestion is to get two books: This one to whack others upside the head (its weight alone will do the trick) -- and "Simplicity" by Bill Jensen. Simplicity focuses on how to figure out what to do when there are too many revolutions, too much info and too many choices all clamoring for your attention. Combine the two books and you might actually change your world.
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Summary: some good thoughts but lot of rehash ...
Review: A lot of the early ideas in the book are rehashes of things that have appeared in earlier literature. However, the later chapters on how to innovate within the context of a big monolithic company and for a big company on how to provide a great environment for innovation are worth reading (esp. for those that have been sleeping for the past 5-7 years). I wouldn't worry about reading the book cover to cover. Flip through it real quick ...
Rating: 
Summary: Overpriced, under informationed
Review: "Competing for the Future" was a great book, Hamel's next and solo act was a great disappointment. It seems the author started with a number of the very thoughtful charts from "Competing" and then just added 50 to 75 "questions" such as "Am I a real innovator?" As a result, the intellectual insightfulness was minimal. Secondly, the book came across as an unspiring rewrite of Tom Peters. The author should let Peters do his own sthick. Next, if the author used the term "besotted (sp) CEO" one more time," I would have..." Finally, the graphs and colors add cost but no value.
Rating: 
Summary: Among the best of the best.
Review: i've read this whole book over the last three days. it's one of the best books i've ever read on the subject of revolutionary business tactics. hamel has done a superb job of making the subject matter entertaining as well as using valid real world examples of business innovation. he offers legitimate advice on understanding the complex world of high technology and practical examples of thinking outside of the box. the book isn't as boring and stale as most business books and is very entertaining. there's also a ton of data he uses to back up and support his claims. the book is great for ceo's or corporate rebels alike. i would recommend this book to my family, friends and colleagues alike. the strategies presented are important for life, investing and business. but don't take my word for it.
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Summary: Academic Consultants Tend To Complicate Things!
Review: "Leading The Revolution" can be written in 200 pages instead of around 400 pages. It is a facts book. A bit too long-winded to get the main message across. Most of the ideas are cliche. Words like "Leading" and "Revolution" are catchy, but overused. Nowadays, a lot of academic business consultants are running out of new things to say. So they have to keep on repackaging old ideas, and coming up with new jargons to fool themselves and others, assuming that they are creating the new paradigms in business management! Time to wake up, and get real.
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Summary: Business Books Dull ? Think Again!
Review: Talking about rules for revolutionairies. Senior Managers in corporations around the world still think they can afford the luxury to ignore the impact of technology on business processes. Hamel doesn't talk about technology though, he talks about business concept innovation. And what you can contribute to that in person. A must read for everybody that thinks for themselves and everybody who forgot how to do that. I particularly like the case studies, they are about real people in real companies, like IBM. Finished reading, the pictures make it a nice coffee tablebook too. Who would have thought Harvard Business School Press would publish photobooks, now that's a revolution.
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Summary: The best business book yet?
Review: Professor Hamel's lucid and engaging treatise on "radical innovation" is one of the best business books of the past decade or two. Like "In Search of Excellence," it is rich with inspiring and practical examples. Like "Re-engineering the Corporation," it addresses squarely the challenge of changing large, complex organizations. And like "Competing for the Future," (Hamel's earlier book with CK Prahalad), it is visionary and forceful. What appealed to me most about "Leading the Revolution" is that it treats the problem of innovation in an entirely scaleable way--from how you, as an individual, become a radical innovator, to how you turn an entire company into a habitual innovator. Hamel has managed to do the seemingly impossible--to write a book that is relevant for both a first line supervisor and a corporate chieftain. The book is organized into three broad sections. The first section deals with the challenge of revolutionary innovation. Any one of the first three chapters is worth the price of the book alone. What I found most intriguing about Chapter 1 was not the dichotomy between incrementalism and radical innovation, but the idea that competition, at its core, is between different wealth-creating regimes--and that the new regime will require every company to build a systemic capacity for radical business innovation, just like every large company had to build a capacity for industrial R&D in years past. Chapter 2 will make uncomfortable reading for any CFO who has been "squeezing the inefficiency lemon" rather than creating new wealth. I believe Chapter 2 will be useful for any investor who is anxious to know just how much life is left in a company's strategy. Chapter 3 is an eminently practical guide to business concept innovation. It is a comprehensive and usable guide that could be plugged into just about any strategic planning process, or used as a brainstorming tool in just about any setting. The second section of the book speaks to the individual who is anxious to "punch more than their weight." I found it an almost irresistible counterpoint to the kind of Dilbert cynicism which has been in vogue for the past few years. Chapter 4 provides a wide range of techniques for discovering opportunities for radical innovation. (Again, Hamel blends the practical with the inspirational). Chapter 5 outlines the stories of several activists who succeeded in revectoring large companies despite having little formal political power. Chapter 6 is a step-by-step guide to getting heard and making a difference. If you're still stuck in your cubicle after Chapter 6 you have no one but yourself to blame. The last three chapters deal with the challenge of building an innovation-friendly company. It is, essentially, a blueprint for making innovation as ubiquitous a capability as quality or customer service. The book is visually stunning, without being cutesy or slick. I believe it will be on the best seller lists for a long time into the future, and just might displace "In Search of Excellence" as the best-selling business book ever. Refreshingly, there's hardly a mention of Hamel's consulting company, Strategos. While it seems that much of the book draws on Strategos' experience, Hamel has wisely chosen to downplay the connection. Unlike most consultant-produced books, "Leading the Revolution" will probably succeed without the big ad budgets and marketing hype that typically surround consultant-authored biz books.
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Summary: Mr. Hamel Where is the beef!
Review: There is nothing new in this book. This book is a "call to arms". Hamel is exhorting everybody in large companies to lead the revolution. Coming from someone who has never worked in a large company, most of the advice is rather naive, irritating and preachy. The advice is rather generic and if you replace the startups with "Japanese" and "e" references with quality, it sounds like a book from the eighties. He provides examples of successful revolutionaries like John Patrick. But, how about analyzing the millions of "soliders" who perished or left after waging fruitless battles. Being a revolutionary is not as easy as portrayed in this book. That is the reason why many talented managers leave and become entrepreneurs because it is easier to start new than change existing legacy processes, procedures and systems. This is yet another "motivational" book for clueless managers by a so-called guru who have never built anything. Hamel is a backseat driver who advices senior management but has never experienced the day-to-day heartbreak of execution or crisis management. Armchair experts or historians seem to be dime a dozen these days, especially on the e-bandwagon. This genre of e-help for managers reminds me a lot of self-help gurus like Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change), relationship counselors John Gray (Men are from Mars etc.), and Phillip C. McGraw (Life Strategies). The Amazon review for Life Strategies states -- Some people spend their lives reacting to what life hands them, while others craft life to fit their goals. Does this sound familar :-) What is good about the book? This book has been superbly edited. The prose flows very well. My hats off to the editors at Harvard Business School. They certainly are the best.
Rating:
Summary: High Production Value -- Low content value
Review: Leading the Revolution has a very high production qualities, similar to those found in a Coffee Table book. Unfortunatly the value of the content of this book is roughly equivalent to a coffee table book. Looks pretty -- so now what. Very disappointing to someone who admires Hamels other works Alliance Advantage and Competing for the Future. Those books reflected well researched, reasoned, and actionable advice. This book is filled with hyperbole and exaggeration to the point that Hamel loses his argument. This feeling is physically reinforced by the books high production values (paper weight and pictures.) It appears that more attention was paid to these items rather than what the book has to say, or the power of its message. In this regard, Lead the Revolution is a major dissapointment for people who actually have to Lead the Revolution. Lots of noise but not lots of advice that is new or origional or actionalble. Hamel lays out a process on how to redefine your strategy which is good and somewhat traditional. The problem is that the first 1/3 of the book is so full of hype that the rest of the work looses credibility. I put the book down three times before I finnally made myself get to the end. The basic concepts of new business concept models, competition, and threats from new companies has been in the market for some time. Kevin Kelly's works have a well established track record in this area with significantly more meat to them. I am getting very tired of eCommerce hype books and unfortunately Leading the Revolution is one of them albiet one with very high production values.
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