Chunka Mui is an author, lecturer, and consultant on strategy, innovation, and the organizational inhibitors to success. He has deep insight on the breakthrough possibilities at the intersection of business and technology. At the same time, he has pragmatic appreciation of the challenges in harnessing such opportunities. He challenges readers and clients to think hard about strategic opportunities in their markets while at the same time offering them well-grounded, sensible advice on how to maximize their chances of success.

Chunka co-wrote the best-seller Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance, which made “killer app” part of the business vocabulary. Unleashing the Killer App sold more than 100,000 copies in the U.S. and was translated into nine languages. The book still has legs: Gordon Crovitz, writing in The Wall Street Journal, named it one of the five best books on business and the Internet. Crovitz was, until recently, president of the Dow Jones Consumer Media Group and publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

With the publication of his latest book Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years, co-authored with Paul Carroll, Chunka once again aims to revolutionize the practice of corporate innovation. Grounded by research into 750 major business failures, the book makes the case for legitimizing constructive dissent and fostering learning from the failure of others, thereby increasing the odds of success by decreasing the chances of failure. A companion article, “Seven Ways to Fail Big,” appears in the September 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review. The Wall Street Journal called Billion-Dollar Lessons “an insightful and crisply written book, one that offers wisely chosen and well-narrated case studies but also good advice.” The Globe and Mail named Billion-Dollar Lessons the #1 business book of 2008. Inc. Magazine called it one of the best books for business owners. CIO Insight named it one of the top 10 business technology books of 2008.

Chunka’s perspectives are shaped by decades of experience working with premier companies as a consultant with leading consultancies. Chunka began his consulting career with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) . He was an early member of that firm’s Artificial Intelligence Group and a founding member of its Center for Strategic Technology Research. He moved to the Index Group in time to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of the business reengineering craze that Index launched. While at Index, he co-founded and directed the Vanguard research program (now TTI/Vanguard), where he led 100 member companies in U.S. and Europe in exploring the strategic implications of emerging digital technologies. Chunka then moved to Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Inc. At Diamond, he was chief innovation officer and a member of the firm’s worldwide operating committee. As a leader of Diamond’s strategy practice, he worked with numerous companies across many industries on their business strategies.

Chunka is currently an independent business adviser and lecturer. He is also a fellow at Diamond and on the board of directors of Viewpoints Research Institute. Viewpoints, under the direction of computer pioneer Alan Kay, is in the midst of a five-year effort funded by the National Science Foundation to create “Moore’s Law Software:” a high-risk high-reward exploratory effort to create a large-scope-and-range software system in 3-4 orders of magnitude less code than current practice.

Chunka was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the US at a tender age. He has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from M.I.T. In his younger days Chunka was pretty quick with a soccer ball and held a black belt in karate. Now his hobbies tend more towards golf, gardening, hiking and reading. His personal website is at chunkamui.com.

Part one of the interview addresses a number of questions, including the role of the investor relations officer in his/her organization’s strategic deliberations, the challenge of addressing investor and financial analyst sentiment without becoming hostage to them, the limits of intuition, the importance (and limits) of outside perspectives, and the role of discipline in the planning process.

Part two address the institutionalizing of dissent, the corporate evolution of successful companies, why companies keep making big acquisitions in the face of overwhelming evidence that they tend to fail, the danger of trying to buy oneself out of a tough strategic situation, the red flags associated with big synergy plays, and what to do before a big deal is on the table.

Part three addresses executive compensation, corporate culture, how to be effective when dissent is not tolerated, and the importance of assessing alternative future scenarios in the course of evaluating strategy.

Part four explores how to avoid analysis paralysis, why dissent is valuable for CEOs, how to improve the dialog between management and the board of directors while still respecting the bright line between management and governance, the danger of consensus building, the personality of CEOs, and why “the only thing harder than starting a new initiative is killing one.”

Part five closes the interview with an exploration of the difference between noble and ignoble failures and the legacy of George Eastman, founder of Kodak.

Thanks to NIRI and Michael Santoli for permission to post this video.

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