Innovation Leadership

Turn creativity from a hit-or-miss proposition into something you can count on with this highly-praised program. Its co-authors, Alan G. Robinson and Sam Stern, are top thinkers in the field of corporate creativity and together they have advised dozens of major organizations in the United States and abroad.

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.

Better executive health drives business performance and a stronger society. For the experienced manager as well as manager in training, business school professor, and executive coach; Steven P. MacGregor helps you leverage this truth in your life and your business. MacGregor shares breakthrough insights and techniques he's honed through seven years of pioneering the world-renowned Sustaining Executive Performance (SEP) program and working with thousands of top executives worldwide.

It has never been harder to see what's happening around us, interpret information efficiently, and develop strategies that are executed in a successful way. This is partly down to the speed of change and also down to the mindset about change that is common amongst large and small companies. To them, change is seen as the enemy. This book proposes a role reversal and gives people a brand new methodology as a practical guide in how to use change as a fueling mechanism to generate outstanding business success.

Who’s going to write the next chapter in the saga of American business? Who’s going to chronicle the best way to compete, the new way to win? That’s the mission of Mavericks at Work, a book that profiles a network of rebels who are creating a new business model that makes use of fresh principles and captures what it means to be a state-of-the-art organization. Including such pioneering companies as ING Direct, Southwest Airlines, Pixar, HBO, Anthropologie, Craigslist, Netflix, and Commerce Bank, this book is nothing short of a lively new intellectual agenda for business.

What Matters Now is Gary Hamel's impassioned plea to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about management, the meaning of work, and organizational life. He asks, "What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead?"

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.

Drawing on considerable original research and case studies from Wang’s acclaimed firm, Constellation Research, this groundbreaking guide reveals which kinds of companies will thrive and which will get crushed by the powerful forces now at work. Ultimately, you will understand how the business world is changing in the face of extreme competition and, most importantly, you will learn how to adapt now to stay relevant and in demand.

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.

Dangerous churches should be norm. Church leaders and church people alike shrink back from danger because we want safety. Jesus said that he's overcome the world and its troubles. Dangerous churches put everything on the line for the one thing that matters most: reaching lost people.It's dangerous not to be a dangerous church. The book is less about methods or even the message of God, but about a church that risks everything it has to reach lost people.

Mark DeYmaz presents seven common obstacles to building a healthy multi-ethnic church, taking the reader beyond merely understanding the need for diversity, to the practical challenges and ramifications of day-to-day leadership within a diverse congregation of faith.

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.

In How to Kill a Unicorn, Payne pulls back the curtain on how the company is able to bring more innovative products and ideas successfully to market than any other firm, and offers inside accounts of how they solved their biggest challenges. Embedded in their approach to new ideas are hard-earned lessons about what separates innovations that work from those that don’t.

The Monkey and the Fish decodes profound shifts and events taking place in the world today due to globalism, multiculturalism and technology, and introduces an original approach to ministry, church, and leadership known as The Third Culture. The book title refers to an Eastern parable that will challenge you to reexamine fundamental assumptions of the evangelical movement, including erroneous interpretations that have made the church increasingly irrelevant in North America and the global village.

NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton is a friend of failure. In the 1970s, he brought the Minnesota Vikings to the Superbowl three times - and three times his team was crushed. The first two companies he founded both quickly folded. But by learning how to deal with defeat, Tarkenton discovered the key to success.

In 2006, John Warren and John Thompson led Marines into combat in the world’s most dangerous city: Ramadi, Iraq. But when they got home, employers didn’t understand what they had to offer. Undeterred, they founded their own specialty mortgage company, growing it from scratch into a national powerhouse over the course of a decade.

Nothing is more dangerous than a single compelling idea that is lived out and nothing is more harmless than lots of little ideas never applied. By creatively communicating one Big Idea every week your church will transform people into genuine Christ followers who live out the mission of Jesus. Less is more!

In Fostering Innovation: How to Build an Amazing IT Team, accomplished technology strategist, executive, and leader Andrew Laudato delivers an eye-opening exploration of how to design, build, staff, and run a high-performing IT department. The book is filled with universally applicable strategies and techniques that can transform any IT team into an all-star cast perfectly aligned with your organization's objectives.

Leading in a Non-Linear World leads listeners through a groundbreaking set of science-based strategies to help them face rising demand, uncertainty and change posed by disruptive technologies and seismic shifts in globalization. The book shows how our mindset, more than our knowledge and expertise, has the potential to be our greatest asset in facing the future. Jean Gomes reviews the latest brain research revealing that our mindset is the interplay of feeling, thinking, and seeing, and how we can build it to significantly increase our wellbeing and performance.

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.