The Future of Management.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf - Brief article - Book review

The Future of Management. By Gary Hamel, with Bill Breen. Harvard Business School Press, 272 pages. $26.95.

Sure, the title is a bit imperious. But Gary Hamel isn't just any management writer. He may not be the second coming of Peter Drucker, but he's high in the pantheon of current thinkers about how companies succeed and fail, with bestsellers like Leading the Revolution and Competing for the Future.

Here, Hamel has his thinking cap on again, and has put his thoughts together with the help of writer Bill Breen. As is his custom, he is focused sharply on innovation. Going forward, he writes, companies will have to become "gushers of rule-breaking innovation" that will require employees to give the best of themselves every day.

Hamel is nothing if not a phrasemaker. Consider: "Like the gasoline engine, our industrial-age management model is languishing out at the far end of the S-curve, and may be reaching the limits of its improvability.... The fact is, that despite its...