Career Innovation

Generating and executing great ideas is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses - or none at all. There has to be a better way. In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions - the ones all companies must ask to survive.

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.

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.

A company's mindset - its intent to do good, avoid harmful consequences, and innovate responsibly - is not enough. That mindset must be supported by a business model, a mechanism that leaders must intentionally and proactively build along with the company from the ground up, one that incentivizes and rewards the organization for fulfilling its intentions.

If you read (or listen to) nothing else on inspiring and executing innovation, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you innovate effectively.

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.

In Eat, Sleep, Innovate, innovation expert Scott Anthony and his impressive team of coauthors use groundbreaking research in behavioral science to provide a first-of-its-kind playbook for empowering individuals and teams to be their most curious and creative - every single day.

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.

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.

Are you in the process of reinventing yourself or your organization? Innovation Starts with I will help you future-proof yourself through a transformative journey of self-discovery. In this awe-inspiring work that explores self-awareness as an integral prerequisite to an innovative mindset, Saleema Vellani, entrepreneur and innovation strategist, serves to re-envision innovation. As we navigate the current Reinvention Revolution, one thing has become crystal clear: Innovation isn’t just about technology—it’s about being human.

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.

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.

In 1982, business guru Tom Peters co-authored In Search of Excellence, one of the most influential business guides of all time. More recently, through 400 seminars in 47 states and 22 countries, Peters reexamined, refined, and reinvented his views on innovation, the #1 survival strategy, he asserts, for businesses of the next millennium.

For more than two decades, Winning at New Products has served as the bible for product developers everywhere. Robert G. Cooper demonstrates why consistent product development is vital to corporate growth and how to maximize your chances of success. Citing the author's most recent research, Winning at New Products showcases innovative practices by industry leaders to present a field-tested game plan for achieving product leadership.

In order to be successful both today and in the future, you need to separate yourself from the competition by practicing the breakthrough principle of adaptive innovation. How? By delivering an experience that the competition either cannot or will not attempt to copy. This is literally impossible if you stick to what is already familiar to you because whatever is familiar to you and your customers is likely to be familiar to your competition. You must create a new experience that is unique to you and that fosters a powerful emotional attachment with your target customer.

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.

Design offers so much more than an aesthetically pleasing logo or banner, a beautification add-on after the heavy lifting. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune shows how design provides a unique angle on problem-solving—how it can be leveraged strategically to cultivate innovation and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork. As he does so, he describes his journey as a Black professional through corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity.

A lean strategy is about gaining a competitive edge by offering better quality products at competitive prices and making a sustainable profit by eliminating waste through engaging employees in discovering deeper ways to think about their own jobs and smarter ways of working together. In its current form, lean has been radically effective, but its true powers have yet to be harnessed. The Lean Strategy harnesses that power and delivers a new way of creating value from lean.

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.

IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.