ADAPTIVE SPACE
How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting
Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations
Lack of Agility is the kiss of death. Position your company to succeed in a world of disruption.
Adaptability has never been more critical, and this book takes a practical look at what it takes to build that capability in your organization.
Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author
Adaptive Space is the best book I've read about what it takes for big organizations to innovate as a way of life.
Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor and author of bestsellers including Scaling Up Excellence
Adaptive Space provides us with a modern-day cypher that unlocks the often elusive and increasingly important world of innovation and agility.
Greg Pryor, Vice President of Leadership and Organization Effectiveness at Workday
Adaptive Space gives real insight into how mammoth companies such as General Motors were are able to disrupt their strategy paradigm to thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Melissa Howell, Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources, Kellogg Company
Incisive and immediately impactful! Arena's book is that rare gem, applying sharp analytical insights from state-of-the-art science.
Glenn R. Carroll, Laurence W. Lane Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business
I have known, and coached, for years that relationships are essential to organizational success. Adaptive Space elevates this understanding to a whole new level by masterfully articulating how specific network connections facilitate innovation and agility.
Keith Ferrazzi, NY Times #1 bestselling author
Arena has masterfully articulated years of experience and results in building agile organizations, and wrapped them in contemporary and futuristic cases and examples.
Roger L. Cude, SVP, Human Resources, Humana
Adaptive Space is a fascinating look at how General Motors and other companies are rewriting the rules of business so they can proactively disrupt themselves.
Jeanne C Meister, Co-Author, The Future Workplace Experience
With Adaptive Space, Arena masterfully takes us where few authors have been able to, seamlessly integrating research with application in some of the most respected organizations today.
Rob Cross, leading network expert
Adaptive Space will be at the center of business conversations for the next decade.
Robert Quinn, best-selling author
Adaptive
Space
Adaptive Space reveals how companies are transforming themselves into responsive, agile organizations suited for the age of disruption by enabling individual employees to connect and create across networks—the best way for any company to unleash creative potential from within.
The book highlights four key network roles—brokers, connectors, energizers and challengers—that all organizations need in order to enable “Adaptive Space.” These roles help to facilitate the movement of ideas and information across the firm, and therefore, enable the organization to positively disrupt itself.
Adaptive Space requires four types of connections...
DISCOVERY
DEVELOPMENT
DIFFUSION
DISRUPTION
Michael J. Arena, Ph.D. is an acclaimed speaker and author of the groundbreaking research on Adaptive Space, which won the 2017 Walker Prize from People + Strategy. He is a leading expert in organizational network analysis and his work has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Chief Executive Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider and Sloan Management Review. Arena is also the Chief Talent Officer for GM and has played a critical role in the company’s transformation. He launched GM2020, a grass roots initiative designed to enable employees to positively disrupt the way they work, which was highlighted in Fast Company. Arena teaches in Penn’s Masters in Organizational Dynamics program and acts as a design thinking coach within the Stanford dSchool. He also spent two years as a visiting scientist within MIT’s Media Lab and served as a Senior Vice President of Leadership Development at Bank of America.
