Career Innovation

Ori Brafman and management consultant Judah Pollack dramatically demonstrate how even the best and most efficient organizations - from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army - can become more innovative by allowing a little unstructured space and "contained chaos" into their planning and decision-making. Through their consulting work, they realized that while structure and hierarchy are essential both in large corporations and small groups, too much of either can stifle creativity.

Nearly all of today’s major innovation workshops and programs call on organizations to drive innovation. What they miss is that innovation comes from the personal creativity of individuals. And creativity doesn’t require an advanced education or technical skills. All employees can be creative. Often, all they lack is a fitting mindset and the right skills.

Few organizations solve as many impossible problems as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and nobody knows more about leading rocket scientists to unlikely breakthroughs than Adam Steltzner. As the phase lead and development manager for EDL (entry, descent, and landing) of the Curiosity rover to Mars, Steltzner spearheaded the creation of one of engineering's wackiest kluges - the sky crane, which allowed the heaviest rover in the history of space exploration to land on Mars unscathed.

When faced with new challenges, it’s easy to feel our solutions need to be equally unprecedented. We think we need a revolution. But what if this is a big mistake? In Evolutionary Ideas, Sam Tatam shows how behavioral science and evolutionary psychology can help us solve tomorrow’s challenges, not by divining something the world has never seen, but by borrowing from yesterday’s solutions–often in the most unexpected ways.

50 Business Classics presents the key ideas from classic texts such as My Years with General Motors and Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited to contemporary business lessons from the rise of tech giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon. It contains revealing biographies of luminaries like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett, as well as lesser-known stories including creation of publishing giant Penguin and Chinese behemoth Alibaba.

Jobs to Be Done gives you a clear-cut framework for thinking about your business, outlines a road map for discovering new markets, new products, and new services, and helps you generate creative opportunities to innovate your way to success.

In the wake of economic downturn, foreign competition, spiking oil prices, and even war, American business throughout this decade has been thrust into crisis. To improve their performance, corporations everywhere have adopted a wide range of tools and techniques, yet many continue to struggle. Going Lean points to a better way.

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.

The pressure to generate big ideas can feel overwhelming. We know that bold innovations are critical in these disruptive and competitive times, but when it comes to breakthrough thinking, we often freeze up. Instead of shooting for a $10-billion payday or a Nobel Prize, the most prolific innovators focus on Big Little Breakthroughs - small creative acts that unlock massive rewards over time. By cultivating daily micro-innovations, individuals and organizations are better equipped to tackle tough challenges and seize transformational opportunities.

Rethink how your organization creates, delivers, and captures value - or risk becoming irrelevant. If you listen to nothing else on business model innovation, listen to these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you reach new customers and stay ahead of your competitors by reinventing your business model.

The Maker Movement is where all the next great inventions and innovations are happening - and you can play a part in it. The Maker Movement Manifesto takes you deep into the movement. Hatch describes the remarkable technologies and tools now accessible to you and shares stories of how ordinary people have devised extraordinary products, giving rise to successful new business ventures. He explains how economic upheavals are paving the way for individuals to create, innovate, make a fortune - with nothing more than their own creativity and some hard work.

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.

Highly acclaimed author, trainer, and presenter Paul Sloane demonstrates how the lateral leader develops the vision, culture, and processes that transform a regular business into an innovation hothouse. With a lively, energetic and practical approach, The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills will teach you dynamic, up-to-date techniques to unleash the creative energies of your people and reveal how to put the techniques to work immediately.

Michael Colburn is an inventor. He wasn't always, but he made himself into one and realized a powerful truth: Inventing is a skill anyone can master. Over the last four decades, he has created inventions and built businesses and partnerships worth millions of dollars based on his inventions. Invent, Innovate, and Prosper is a practical handbook for inventing based on Michael's decades of work as a successful inventor. He shares his step-by-step system for launching profitable inventions, along with the surprising real-life lessons that helped him thrive.

Most of us assume our success relies on a network of friends and close contacts. But innovative thinking requires a steady stream of fresh ideas and new possibilities, which strangers are more likely to introduce. Our survival instincts naturally cause us to look upon strangers with suspicion and distrust, but in The Necessity of Strangers, Alan Gregerman offers the provocative idea that engaging with strangers is an opportunity, not a threat, and that engaging with the right strangers is essential to unlocking our real potential.

Chaotic Change is designed to be a comprehensive guide for leaders, innovators, and change-makers navigating the complexities of the modern business landscape. Through personal anecdotes, case studies, and practical strategies, this book provides a roadmap for managing chaotic change—a process that drives and sustains innovation. From grasping the dynamics of strategic excellence to fostering a culture of happiness and clarity within organizations, each section builds on the next, offering a holistic approach to change management.

Présentation du cours: "La créativité est contagieuse, faites-la tourner", disait Einstein qui à force de s'imaginer voyageant sur un photon a découvert la relativité. Certes, passer du "pourquoi ?" au "pourquoi pas ?" procure suffisamment de jubilation pour que chacun contamine son entourage sans inutiles scrupules. Mais cela n'est rien encore. Philippe Verhaeghe nous gratifie aussi du "comment ?". La créativité est d'abord affaire de méthode. La créativité est ensuite le ressort de l'innovation.

The history-making development of the Chinese economy has entered a new phase: China is moving aggressively from a strategy of imitation to one of innovation. Driven both by domestic needs and by global ambition, China is establishing itself at the forefront of technological innovation. Western businesses need to prepare for a tidal wave of innovation from China that is about to hit Western markets, and Chinese businesses need to understand the critical importance of innovation in their future.

In the world of work, the single greatest asset of successful individuals, teams, and organizations is their mindset - what happens in between their ears. It's not the corporate strategy, the sales compensation plan, or the market segments they're pursuing. It is what each leader, team member, and employee chooses to focus on, to believe, and to create for themselves and others.

Published in more than two dozen countries, How to Change the World has become a bible for the field of social entrepreneurship. It tells the stories of people building innovative and pattern-changing solutions to social and economic problems.