Business Innovation

Innovation is worth little unless it generates lasting success, and gaining measurable results from new ideas requires more than creative risk-taking. Successful innovation demands a tactical approach, and Getting Innovation Right reveals how your company can secure real traction and growth in the marketplace.

Everyone says that innovation is important. The problem is that no one tells you how to be innovative. Innovation is a State of Mind sets out a step-by-step guide to creating innovative ideas and putting them into action. You'll learn how to generate more ideas with greater potential, how to grow and evaluate them, test their effectiveness, and then implement the ones that are going to improve your business.

Drawing on the knowledge and experience of working with hundreds the world's top social change leaders in all fields, Beverly Schwartz presents a model for change based on five proven principles that any individual leader or organization can apply to bring about deep, lasting, and systematic change. Rippling shows how to activate the type of change that is needed to address the critical challenges that threaten to destroy the foundations of our society and planet in these increasingly turbulent times.

We live in a world of vast collaborative potential. Yet all too often, powerful boundaries create barriers that can splinter groups. And this can lead to uninspiring results. To transform borders into frontiers in today's global, multistakeholder organizations, you need Boundary Spanning Leadership. Powered by a decade of global research and practice by the top-ranked Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), this book takes you from rural towns in the US to Hong Kong's skyline, showing you how to build bridges across boundaries.

Do you want to create social impact, but feel there must be a better way? There is. So many problems the world faces go largely unaddressed because social entrepreneurs are unaware that they hold the power to design a better organization for creating more effective social impact. Not anymore.

The American dream continues to resonate with immigrants from around the world. Millions of people hope to come to the United States to build a better life for themselves and their families, often by creating and growing new ventures and companies. While not everyone succeeds, many do. Mei Xu is one of those successes. In Burn, entrepreneur and international business­woman Mei Xu tells her story of ingenuity, determination, and luck.

A moral dilemma gripped Anil K. Gupta when he was invited by the Bangladeshi government to help restructure their agricultural on-farm research sector in 1985. He noticed how the marginalized farmers were being paid poorly for their otherwise unmatched knowledge. The gross injustice of this constant imbalance led Gupta to found what would turn into a resounding social and ethical movement - the Honey Bee Network - bringing together and elevating thousands of grassroots innovators.

Kaizen, skills, integration: three words that 20 years ago didn't mean anything, today they mean a lot. Our economy and society rotate around these concepts. Which role do they play in our life? Furthermore, we all know that the globalization is making our system changing so fast that we literally have to run! And who wins the marathon at the end? The business with the best players. The most motivated, the most skilled-matching team.

First introduced in Anne Marie Knott's influential Harvard Business Review article, RQTM (Research Quotient) is a revolutionary new tool that measures a company's R&D capability - its ability to convert investment in R&D into products and services people want to buy or to reduce the cost of producing these.

Innovation on Tap is the story of innovation in America told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs, from Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to Lin-Manuel Miranda and his Broadway smash, Hamilton. The stories illustrate the sweep and impact of innovation. From razor blades, insurance, and baseball to smart cities, online running communities, and cybersecurity, innovators across three centuries gather in an imaginary barroom to discuss the essential themes of entrepreneurship, while emphasizing and reemphasizing the importance of community to their success.

We are terrible at managing creativity and innovation. But we're trying our best. Just beneath the ceiling of meeting rooms at night, everywhere around the world, from London to Lahore, Honolulu to Ho Chi Minh City, there is something sad happening. Above the long table and strewn chairs, amid the fluorescent light that has been left on despite the energy saving directive on the wall, there are a million little ideas just floating amongst the dust particles, drifting in the air.

You always knew digital was going to change things, but you didn’t realize how close to home it would hit. In every industry, digital competitors are taking advantage of new platforms, tools, and relationships to undercut rivals, get closer to customers, and disrupt the usual ways of doing business. The only way to compete is to evolve. James McQuivey of Forrester Research has been teaching people how to do this for more than a decade. He’s gone into the biggest companies, even in traditional industries like insurance and consumer packaged goods, and changed the way they think about innovation.

Life is not exactly a bed of roses for most innovation leaders and intrapreneurs - those assertive, innovative, corporate risk-takers who passionately turn ideas into profitable products. They take on corporate sacred cows and face down challenges that would cause less driven and less talented people to quickly throw their hands down in defeat. They struggle daily to unleash entrepreneurial thinking while dealing with an army of people fiercely dedicated to maintaining the status quo.

Flipping TVs is a business model that is often overlooked, but those who are getting involved and know what to look out for can make impressive additional incomes–with very little effort.

Over the last 5 years, we have seen the rise of Responsive Nonprofits who committed to drive innovation in the charitable sector. A new breed of growth-oriented nonprofit leaders are beginning to emerge. These innovative leaders are using new tactics and technology to drive exponential impact across their fundraising, marketing, program, and operations teams. Through hours of conversations with hundreds of the leading innovators in philanthropy, we’ve discovered 9 key practices that responsive nonprofits adopt in order to transform their operations.

En este momento, todos los convencionalismos son cuestionados, lo mismo en el arte que en la ciencia, la tecnología, la política, la religión, la familia, la economía, la educación. Nada quedará fuera. Con todo y que la incertidumbre hace que el presente se parezca cada vez menos al futuro, no hay ninguna razón para que el miedo nos paralice. Lo importante es prepararnos. El mundo estuvo congelado en nuestras mentes por más de un siglo y ahora nos desafía para reinventarnos y pensar diferente. Hoy el imperativo no es crear o morir sino innovar y vivir.

After a successful career in the US Navy, retired rear admiral Danelle Barrett knows plenty about effective, motivational leadership, and now she’s sharing it with anyone who strives to be a bold change leader.

When I was growing up, I always thought there were only two ways to get rich. Number one: You were born rich. Number two: Some family member left you a bunch of money when they kicked the bucket. As much as people love to talk up the American dream, I grew up inside the American reality - raised inside a trailer in New Jersey, born to a 14-year-old mother. But now, things are a little different. I've done lots of cool things with my life, but most people know me as "the ab roller guy".

Today's leaders face so many challenges - employee retention, operational efficiency, culture, collaboration, leading across generations, and more - but communication is at the heart of every one of those issues. A clear message with a powerful delivery gets you halfway home. Leadership Language will help you to peel back the ineffective "business speak", so you can change the conversation. And change your results.

This book is dedicated to all the awesome inventors and innovation strategists. The mavericks that embrace innovation. Those that embark on the journey of the unknown. Those that take the familiar and transcend it to something completely new. Those that seek to create something genuinely special for other people’s experience.