Career Innovation

Big Bang Disruptions are new products and services that enter the market better and cheaper than established products, seemingly overnight. Larry Downes and Paul F. Nunes offer critical insights and strategies companies are using not just to protect themselves but to create and appropriate disruptive innovations for themselves. The authors detail the four stages of big bang innovation and show leaders how to see disruptions headed their way - and take action before it’s too late.

Without a strong grasp of performance metrics, a company can have no clear, quantitative indication of its performance improvement. Six Sigma Business Scorecard offers a unique approach to measuring performance. Listeners will learn how to track their improvements in operations and financials - and make critical adjustments if such improvements are not up to expectations - using Six Sigma. This much-needed second edition of Six Sigma Business Scorecard delivers an innovative Execution Map allowing you to implement, reap, and quantify the many advantages of Six Sigma.

In Defying Reality, David M. Ewalt traces the story of virtual reality from ancient amphitheaters to Cold War military laboratories, through decades of hype and failure, to a 19-year-old video game aficionado who made the impossible possible. Ewalt looks at how businesses are already using this tech to revolutionize the world around us, and what we can expect in the future. Ewalt offers a unique perspective on VR. With firsthand accounts and on-the-ground reporting, Defying Reality shows how VR will change our work, our play, and the way we relate to one another.

If you've ever read a book on an e-reader, unleashed your inner rock star playing Guitar Hero, built a robot with LEGO Mindstorms, or ridden in a vehicle with child-safe air bags, then you've experienced first hand just a few of the astounding innovations that have come out of the Media Lab over the past 25 years. But that’s old hat for today’s researchers, who are creating technologies that will have a much deeper impact on the quality of people’s lives over the next quarter century.

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.

In Grow from Within, two leading scholars from the Kellogg School of Management explain how your company can discover the right approach to corporate entrepreneurship and make it profitable. Taking innovation to the next level, corporate entrepreneurship is the process of building new businesses within an established organization - new businesses that are distinct from the core company but that leverage some of its most powerful assets.

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.

That’s exactly the premise that CEO of JMARK Business Solutions Inc., Thomas H. Douglas, explores in Adapt or Die—a long-awaited book that examines the extreme challenges, shifts, demands, and vast opportunities for today’s American businesses. Told through the story of one bold company (People First IT), Adapt or Die takes listeners through the unparalleled business system known as The Algorithm of Success that has the potential to inspire, ignite, and affect change for all aspects of an organization.

Today’s board rooms, think tanks, and staff lounges are more diverse than ever before. These cultural differences can either lead to gridlock among stubborn, single-minded thinkers or they can catalyze innovation and growth among an expansive team of creative, distinctive individuals. Diverse teams are far more creative than homogenous teams—but only when they are managed effectively. Driven by Difference identifies the management practices necessary to minimize conflict while maximizing the informational diversity found in varied values and experiences.

Part philosophy, part business, and part history, this book is a kaleidoscopic view of the way humans have been able to achieve greatness for themselves, their organizations, and the world at large. You'll learn from the wisdom of Eastern philosophies that are over 2,500 years old and the interconnected insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Couple that with Fortune 100 corporate cross pollination for creativity and startup thinking for how to adapt with ease, and you have Everything Connects. This isn't just a quick fix for your next quarter; this is how you succeed in the long run.

*Cake on Tuesday* unveils the intentional and unintentional aspects of Elizabeth Bieniek's entrepreneurial journey. From building a dream team within big tech to discovering her superpower of leading in ambiguity, she imparts insights into human dynamics, team synergy, and the significance of cultural care. The book distills leadership, innovation, and personal growth lessons, offering a narrative beyond technology to reveal the heart and stories behind groundbreaking advancements.

As an innovator in a large company working hard to drive growth and deliver products consumers love, your size is an advantage—one that you can leverage for incredible results. But when it comes to innovation, you can’t rely on big-company strength alone. Between your company’s capabilities and the entrepreneurial ethos underscoring every successful startup lies the sweet spot for disruptive innovation, and the key to unlocking exponential growth.

This book shows how companies like Google have reinvented the common practice in management in order to continuously innovate in fast changing industries. With the ever-increasing pace of change, reinventing existing management principles could become a necessity and prove crucial in the long-term competitiveness of many companies. The book presents a unique synthesis of findings from leading research on long-term competitiveness in fast changing industries.

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.

There is perhaps no leadership challenge more daunting than managing creativity - and more urgent than delivering breakthrough innovation. How do you harness some of the most passionate, intelligent people in your organization without stifling them? How do you simultaneously unleash their energy and channel it into something tangible? Lina Echeverría offers seven proven principles through which new ideas come to fruition, from unleashing passion and drive, and embracing productive conflict, to emphasizing excellence and structure while living values that liberate creativity.

Rediscover and liberate your creative genius. The challenge facing today's business leaders is how to transform the tension between running the businesses of today and innovating to build the businesses of tomorrow - how to change and innovate while dealing with the relentless and rapid changes buffeting us daily.

The nature of services in society and the economy is wide-ranging and complex, and the management of services and their innovation provokes a number challenges for practitioners, professionals, and academics. This book provides a range of perspectives on understanding, managing, and reconceptualizing service by bringing together contributions from leading figures in service research, to make a timely and significant multi-disciplinary contribution to the theory and practice of service management.

Create products and services your consumers can't pass up - without the high cost of development.

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".

What can you learn from the most successful companies in the world? The Capital One Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled an unlikely credit card startup to revolutionize the credit industry.