Imagine seeing a newspaper headline that said the pope had come out in favor of birth control. The idea of birth control is hardly new, but the source of the endorsement might be interesting enough to make you read the article.

That is pretty much the situation with strategy guru Gary Hamel’s new book, Leading the Revolution. The ideas aren’t especially fresh, but the fact that he’s writing about them is important.

Hamel’s central assertion is that "in the age of revolution it is not knowledge that will produce new wealth, but insight—insight into opportunities for discontinuous innovation." Now, if you’ve been following along in Context for the past three years, that message is old news. But so what?

With his book, Hamel is lending his considerable weight and reputation to the idea that doing the same old things "faster, better, cheaper" won’t be enough to win a company a competitive advantage. That’s a good thing.

A growing number of executives believe his message but are having trouble convincing other executives that they need to go through the uncertainty, the mess, and the pain of true innovation. But here comes Hamel, with a big name and a book that is destined to be a bestseller, if only because of all the marketing dollars that will be put behind it and all the attention the book will get. Why not have Hamel tell your fellow executives that they are part of the problem and better get with the new program, rather than have you keep doing it? He can probably even get them to smile wryly at his barbs.

Will you personally get anything out of the book if you’re already part of the revolution? After all, most of the ideas have been covered in Clay Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, or in Unleashing the Killer App by Larry Downes and Chunka Mui. In fact, many of the ideas were in Peter Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship back in 1985. (Yes, as usual, Drucker got there long before the rest of us.)

My recommendation would be to pick and choose your way through the book. You’ll find some interesting things in chapters three and six. Chapter three talks about business-concept innovation and provides an excellent model for organizing your thinking about possible innovations. Chapter six offers a road map to effective corporate activism for those whose revolutionary tendencies need some channeling. The final chapter, on making innovation a continuing event, should be your next stop if you have a bit more time.

Skip chapter eight, on design rules for innovation. It’s disappointing. The chapter does support the broad trend that has strategists focusing less on traditional, detailed analysis and more on design. The idea is that analysis is less valuable and can even be a false comfort in a chaotic world; instead, businesses need to redesign themselves so they can adapt quickly as circumstances change. But Hamel’s specific rules have been described better elsewhere.

If you’re looking for raw material, you might flip through the book and read the rich case studies about successful innovation at Enron, Schwab, Cisco, Sony, IBM, and elsewhere. Hamel takes a bit of poetic license, but within reasonable bounds—everybody’s case studies need to be read with a supply of salt nearby.

You could also skim the book to find the sections where Hamel shows how he generates ideas, and tosses out some intriguing ones. For example, he wonders why supermarkets don’t have express lanes for their best customers, rather than for the transient customer picking up a bag of chips? Watching someone gifted at this craft is education in its own right.

If you have time to actually read the whole book, it’s certainly a pleasant read. Hamel has always had a reputation as a powerful speaker. The book is quite witty from time to time.

Some of the considerable consultant-bashing in the book feels odd. The complaining is disingenuous for someone who routinely charges tens of thousands of dollars for a day of his time and who runs a strategy-consulting boutique himself. Why consultants seem to insist on distancing themselves from their profession has always been a curiosity. But the consultant-bashing is just a minor distraction.

My recommendation: Buy lots of copies and pass them around to everyone at work.

McGee is hard at work writing a book of his own on knowledge management. He can be reached at jmcgee@enteract.com.