Career Innovation

Disruption dominates innovation theory and practice. But disruption is destructive—displacing jobs, companies, and even entire industries. Are we missing better, and even bigger, opportunities to innovate and grow? With three decades of research, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne reveal another way to innovate and grow. Beyond Disruption redefines and expands the existing view of innovation by introducing a new approach—nondisruptive creation—that is free from the destructive displacement that happens when innovators set out to disrupt.

As a technology pioneer at MIT and as the leader of three successful start-ups, Kevin Ashton experienced firsthand the all-consuming challenge of creating something new. Now, in a tour-de-force narrative 20 years in the making, Ashton leads us on a journey through humanity's greatest creations to uncover the surprising truth behind who creates and how they do it.

"Innovation is an act of love—or at least it should be. Always. It is a gesture of empathy, respect, generosity, of one human being’s devotion to another,” writes Mauro Porcini at the beginning of this extraordinary book. It is in part a memoir by one of the world’s leading designers—the first chief design officer at both 3M and Pepsi. But even more, it is a manifesto for a genuine, authentic, and deeply humanistic approach to design, one that aims to create personal and social value first and financial and economic value afterward.

Preeminent leadership scholar Linda Hill, along with former Pixar tech wizard Greg Brandeau, MIT researcher Emily Truelove, and Being the Boss coauthor Kent Lineback, found among leaders a widely shared, and mistaken, assumption: that a "good" leader in all other respects would also be an effective leader of innovation. The truth is, leading innovation takes a distinctive kind of leadership, one that unleashes and harnesses the "collective genius" of the people in the organization.

What good will it do to skillfully craft a written argument if you lose your audience? Simple emails, formal reports, blogs, presentations, articles—they need punch to gain influence. Clear structure and logic alone won’t do. To engage readers, you need to make mentally stimulating choices in language—choices that electrify your readers’ mental hotspots. Veteran journalist Bill Birchard reveals the secret of making that happen. He blends the findings from a global cadre of psychologists and neuroscientists with lessons from his long, successful career as a professional writer.

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.

Bringing together a wealth of experience from sixty-plus distinguished global thought leaders, How to Create Innovation is a comprehensive guide to becoming a leader in innovation and an organization that plays to win, containing all of the working methods, separate business innovation models, and processes you need to transform your organization digitally.

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.

Each of us has our own set of dangers (things we’re afraid of losing), opportunities (the possibility of gaining something), and strengths (our unique skills and experience). I call these our “D.O.S.” issues, and I’ll show you how to use them every day as your key to never-ending growth. This also gives you a repeatable way to gain insight into what matters most to your clients and prospects and cultivate a growth-focused relationship with them.

We all know a visionary leader when we see one. They're bold and prophetic and at the same time pragmatic. They don't just promote change - they drive it, while inspiring and mobilizing others to do the same. Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos possess a host of innate qualities that make them extraordinary, but what truly sets them apart is their ability to turn vision into action. Here, Innosight's Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz introduce a new way of thinking and managing, called "future-back", that enables any manager to become a practical visionary.

How much of innovation is inspiration, and how much is hard work? The answer lies somewhere in the middle, says management thinker Peter Drucker. In this HBR classic from 1985, he argues that innovation is real work that can and should be managed like any other corporate function. Success is more likely to result from the systematic pursuit of opportunities than from a flash of genius. Indeed, most innovative business ideas arise through the methodical analysis of seven areas of opportunity.

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.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization's products or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

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.

For more than twenty years, major innovations—the kind that transform industries and even societies—seem to have come almost exclusively from startups. Established companies still dominate most markets, but despite massive efforts and millions of dollars, they can't seem to achieve the same kinds of foundational breakthroughs. The problem, say Tony Davila and Marc Epstein, is that the very processes and structures responsible for established companies' enduring success prevent them from developing breakthroughs. This is the innovation paradox.

In How the World Sees You, author and personal branding expert Sally Hogshead applies the principles of fascination triggers to understanding "personality brands"—how individuals use different triggers to influence, persuade, and captivate others. You already know how you see yourself and the world. But how does the world see you? If you want to be heard and remembered, if you want people to take action on your ideas and opinions, then you need to get the full picture.

Every day major headlines tell the story of a new and better American marketplace. Established corporations have begun reevaluating the quality of their products, the ethics of their supply chains, and how they can give back by donating portions of their profits to meaningful causes. Meanwhile millions of entrepreneurs who want a more responsible and compassionate marketplace have launched a new breed of socially focused business models.

Almost 20 years ago, Clayton Christensen popularized the term disruption in his book The Innovator's Dilemma, describing it as a set of risks that established firms face. Since then, few have closely examined his account. Joshua Gans does so in this book. He looks at companies that have proven resilient and those that have fallen and explains why some companies have successfully managed disruption while others have not.

In this book, enterprise architecting experts Deborah Nightingale and Donna Rhodes offer a framework for enterprise transformation. Successful transformation, they believe, starts with a holistic approach, taking into consideration all facets of the enterprise and its environment rather than focusing solely on one factor-information technology, for example, or organizational structure. This is architecting the future enterprise: creating a blueprint for what the enterprise will look like after the transformation.

In today's complex business environment, the ability to solve problems systematically and make strategic decisions effectively is more crucial than ever. This comprehensive guide presents a proven seven-step framework that breaks down the science of problem-solving into practical, actionable steps.