Business Innovation

How did Ford Motors use Lean development to pull off one of the most impressive corporate turnarounds in history? Largely by avoiding the mistakes that so many companies make when in a death spiral. They looked beyond manufacturing efficiency to change the very fundamentals of how they developed vehicles. In Designing the Future, Lean product development expert James Morgan and world-renowned Lean guru Jeffrey K. Liker reveal why so many companies have achieved only moderate success with Lean in operations, with a limited impact on their overall business.

David Cohen and Brad Feld, leading advocates for entrepreneurs and startups, team up to provide first-time entrepreneurs with the tools, insights, and experiences to help them do more faster. The authors share their decades of experience working with thousands of startup founders and have enlisted the advice of dozens of Techstars startup founders and mentors. Contributors include Tim Ferriss, Eric Ries, Matt Mullenweg (WordPress), Isaac Saldana (SendGrid), and other successful entrepreneurs.

The lack of personal accountability is a problem that has resulted in an epidemic of blame, complaining, and procrastination. No organization or individual can achieve goals, compete in the marketplace, fulfill a vision, or develop people and teams without personal accountability.

The subject of “design thinking” is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press - due in large part to work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this audiobook to reveal how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is an audiobook for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Samit has been at the helm of businesses in the ecommerce, digital video, social media, mobile communications, and software industries, helping to navigate them through turbulent economic times and guide them through necessary transformation so that they stay ahead of the curve and profitable. In Disrupt You!, he reveals how specific strategies that help companies flourish can be applied at an individual level. By challenging assumptions, pinpointing one's unique value, and identifying weaknesses in the structure of current industries, anyone can achieve success and lasting prosperity.

Create the Future is an exciting guidebook for disruptive thinking, innovation, and change, paired with The Innovation Handbook, an updated version of the award-winning book, Exploiting Chaos. The bestseller is loaded with the same tactics, tools, and frameworks that Gutsche's team uses to accelerate 700 of the world's most powerful brands, billionaires, CEOs, and NASA.

Clayton M. Christensen, the author of such business classics as The Innovator’s Dilemma and the New York Times best-seller How Will You Measure Your Life, and coauthors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity and offers a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change.

Bina Venkataraman sees the way forward. A journalist and former adviser in the Obama White House, she helped communities and businesses prepare for climate change, and she learned firsthand why people don’t think ahead - and what can be done to change that. In The Optimist’s Telescope, she draws from stories she has reported around the world and new research in biology, psychology, and economics to explain how we can make decisions that benefit us over time.

What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.

Enjoy figuring out creative solutions to real-world problems that have led to important inventions, discoveries, and innovations throughout history! The problems in this audiobook are related to erudition in fundamental areas - nature, technology, business, science, how things work, or why things are made in a certain way. But, unlike in trivia or jeopardy, you most probably do not know the answer. Instead, logic, out-of-the-box thinking, or intuition leap should be added to your knowledge to puzzle out the correct solution.

This book triggers you to think and act strategically, shows what you can learn from business models inside and outside your industry, and urges you to apply those learnings to make your own shift.

When you create a high-quality, dependable brand and meet a need in the market, you have a business idea that can truly flourish… and the world of vending machines is the perfect place to watch that happen. This comprehensive guide to building a vending machine business primed for growth contains everything you need to build the foundations and watch your business soar to great heights.

You have a terrific idea. It's so powerful that it could change a life, a market, or even the world. There's just one problem: others don't see its power—yet. If you truly value the possibility of your idea, then you're ready to find your Red Thread—the through line that connects your idea to your audience's hearts and minds. Renowned speaker, consultant, and TEDx idea strategist Tamsen Webster shares the same step-by-step process she's taught to hundreds of clients, helping them deliver memorable presentations, keynotes, marketing campaigns, TED talks, and more.

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy but are willing to pay premium prices for. How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer.

Filled with illuminating case studies and brilliant in-depth analysis, this invaluable book provides a multitude of insights that will help you weather market upheavals, adapt to disruptions, and optimize your resources to your best advantage.

How do you stand out from the pack and not just land the account, but win deals at the prices you want? Lee B. Salz’s previous groundbreaking, best-selling book Sales Differentiation armed salespeople with strategies to differentiate both what they sell and how they sell it. Sell Different! provides a new component of Sales Differentiation strategy to help you outsmart, outmaneuver, and outsell the competition to win more deals at the prices you want. This book provides you with the tools you need to land new accounts and grow existing ones.

Forget about building a business - businesses fail and fade into oblivion. Start a revolution instead. James Watt started a rebellion against tasteless mass market beers by founding BrewDog, now one of the world’s best-known and fastest growing craft breweries, famous for beers, bars, and crowdfunding. In this smart, funny book, he shares his story and explains how you too can tear up the rule book and start a company on your own terms. It’s an anarchic, DIY guide to entrepreneurship - and a new manifesto for business.

Throughout this book, Francisco Gonzalez introduces us to innovators who are succeeding in today’s economy despite the increasing challenges to achieving the American Dream. Join Francisco’s journey across America to discover the people and places that taught him the major characteristics most entrepreneurs share. Whether or not you ever want to start your own business, the stories in this volume will help you learn how to build an entrepreneurial mindset, conquer the obstacles that stand in your way, and be emboldened to craft and pursue your American Dream.

Written by the executive who designed and implemented it, the neuroscientist who helped make it work, and the academic who explains why it works and how to do it, Leading Transformation introduces an innovative yet proven process for creating breakthrough change.

This book explains why meaningful innovation naturally emerges from deliberate inefficiency and how large corporations can harness the power of small teams—startups—to drive radical change through systematic experimentation.