Business Innovation

You don't have to be a mechanical genius to be an inventor. Anyone can invent - a parent wrestling with a baby sling...a coach frustrated with slick-soled running shoes...an office worker determined to keep the computer cords untangled. Inventing is simply finding clever solutions to everyday challenges. Author and inventor Patricia Nolan-Brown has turned common annoyances into ingenious and money-making products.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary, analysis, and review of the book and not the original book. In The Future Is Faster Than You Think, authors Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler explore how the convergence of different technologies will revolutionize the way we eat, work, play, and live.

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there's a third team: the linchpins. These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there's no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art. Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations.

Globalization has created a superheated competitive business environment that demands innovation to stay ahead. But it's also created a hidden source of innovation right in your midst: the people in your organization who have deep experience in more than one culture - multiculturals. Having to integrate different cultural frameworks has enabled them to develop abilities that can contribute powerfully to building innovative organizations.

As start-ups use technology to shape the way we live, work, and learn, they're taking on challenges in sectors like health care, infrastructure, and education, where failure is far more consequential than a humorous chat with Siri or the wrong package on your doorstep. These start-ups inevitably have to face governments responsible for protecting citizens through regulation. Love it or hate it, we're entering the next era of the digital revolution: the Regulatory Era.

A complete roadmap to a revolution in business excellence founded on innovation. Author and successful innovator Nicholas Webb believes we need a revolution in business excellence founded on innovation. In The Innovation Playbook, you will learn why innovations fail, the five rules of customer connectivity, the power of "real open" innovation and customer co-creation, the secret formula for reducing product and market risk, the magic of Future-casting, and so much more.

With Expand: Stretching the Future By Design, authors Jens Martin Skibsted, a multiple-award-winning designer, entrepreneur, and design philosopher, and Christian Bason, political scientist and CEO of the Danish Design Centre, take listeners beyond "design thinking" to challenge current habits and carve out new space for more sustainable innovation. From transforming the ways we do business and reimagining health care, to creating planet-restoring housing and humanizing our digital lives in an age of AI, Expand explores how expansive thinking across six key areas.

"Si j'avais demandé à mes clients ce qu'ils voulaient, ils m’auraient répondu 'des chevaux plus rapides' ", disait Henry Ford. Comme quoi, on ne doit pas aborder son marché à partir de clichés comme l'a peut-être fait Kodak. La compétition mondiale avait pour objet la détention des capitaux. Mais aujourd'hui c'est plutôt la culture des idées qui permet de se développer. Il s'agit de générer régulièrement des idées rupturistes.

With unprecedented access, the veteran New York Times reporter and editorial writer who covered New York City and state politics offers a revealing portrait of one of the richest and famously private public figures in the country: business genius, inventor, innovator, publisher, philanthropist, activist, sly wit, and potential presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.

Almost every major company today has made innovation its number one priority. Yet fewer than one in four executives believe their organizations are effective innovators. The pressure to innovate and the price paid for failure keeps rising while most companies haven't progressed at all. They are still using the same antiquated techniques pioneered decades ago. This is why some of the biggest corporations in the world manage to lose entire markets to start-ups they've never heard of.

Niccolò Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about - innovation far more audacious than a new way to find a restaurant or a smart phone you can wear on your wrist. Harvard professor Amy Edmondson and journalist Susan Salter Reynolds explore how to bring into being systems that transform human experience and make the world more livable and sustainable.

In Quick and Nimble, Adam Bryant draws on interviews with more than 200 CEOs to offer business leaders the wisdom and guidance to move an organization faster, to be quick and nimble, and to rekindle the whatever-it-takes collective spark of a start-up, all with the goal of innovating and thriving in a relentlessly challenging global economy. By analyzing the lessons that these leaders have shared in his regular "Corner Office" feature in The New York Times, Bryant has identified the biggest drivers of corporate culture, bringing them to life with real-world examples that reflect this hard-earned wisdom.

The Art of Change Leadership represents a major milestone in the study of change leadership. An approachable yet thorough guide for leaders and team members that illustrates how to increase speed and agility during times of intense technological innovation and fast change, this resource focuses on the ways in which you, as an individual, can harness your unique abilities to lead cultural change and personal leadership in a positive and proactive way.

Mind Tools for Managers helps new and experienced leaders develop the skills they need to be more effective in everything they do. It brings together the 100 most important leadership skills - as voted for by 15,000 managers and professionals worldwide - into a single volume, providing an easy-access solutions manual for people wanting to be the best manager they can be. Each chapter details a related group of skills, plus the tools you need to put ideas into practice.

It is a common misconception that the world of business is cold and calculated, that there is no space in the boardroom for any kind of creative thinking. This is false. In fact, companies would not even thrive, let alone grow, if not for the creative thinking of those who run them. If the CEOs of major corporations don't have a creative bone in their bodies then we would not be enjoying all of the perks of modern living.

Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms zeros in on the cutting-edge thinkers who repeatedly create and deliver breakthrough innovations and new products in large, mature organizations. These employees are organizational powerhouses who solve consumer problems and substantially contribute to the financial value to their firms.

Why do some programs deliver their product under cost, while others bust their budget? Why do some deliver ahead of schedule, while others experience endless delays? And most importantly, which products work better - the quick and thrifty or the slow and expensive? Which situation leads to superior equipment? In this story-filled blend of quirky pop culture and practical engineering insight, Dan Ward presents an entertaining and useful framework for pursuing rapid, frugal innovation.

We live in an age of exponential technology, but this is not so new. Indeed, technological innovation has been promoted so assiduously for so long that there is now a discernible pattern to its emergence known as the Gartner Hype Cycle. Open innovation is no exception. In this book, Henry Chesbrough, the originator of open innovation, examines the hype behind its practice, shows where real results are taking place, and explains how companies can move beyond the hype to achieve real business results.

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.

Innovation requires solving big problems from a new perspective, but many struggle to successfully innovate in their work or personal life when faced with a problem that requires innovative thinking. Author and researcher April Bell has zeroed in on the power of empathy and the ability to embrace risk when solving big problems in the unknown. In her book, The Fire Starter: Igniting Innovation with Empathy, Bell combines engaging personal stories with research to provide listeners with a simple framework helping them connect to greater human truths to solve big problems.