Innovation Leadership

In today’s hypercompetitive business environment, the difference between winning and losing is often slight. It’s like a race, where the fastest runner who crosses the line just one step ahead of the pack is victorious—and the number two finisher is quickly forgotten.

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.

Whether people want more government or less, everyone wants an efficient government. Traditional thinking is that this requires a government to be run more like a business. But a government is not a business, and this approach merely replaces old problems with new ones. In their six-year, five-country study of 77 government organizations—ranging from small departments to entire states—Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder found that the predominant private-sector approaches to improvement don’t work well in the public sector.

Through the lens of Rayburn Electric Cooperative's incredible journey, *Status Quo is Not Company Policy* offers a roadmap for leaders seeking to build resilient, adaptive organizations. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring entrepreneur, this book will inspire you to embrace change, empower your people, and lead with fearlessness.

Confronting Reality will change the way you think about and run your business. It is the first book that shows how to connect the big picture of the new era of business with the nitty-gritty of what to do about it.

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.

From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the "nail it then scale it" method is based on pattern recognition of the timeless principles and key practices used by successful entrepreneurs to repeatedly innovate. These processes and principles have now been distilled into a handbook to guide entrepreneurs and innovative product managers to victory. Stop following conventional wisdom, and join the few entrepreneurs that can consistently take their innovative idea all the way to a successful company launch.

Mark Graban, author of the bestselling Lean Hospitals, shares stories and insights from his popular podcast, My Favorite Mistake, to teach leaders and teams how to create a culture of continuous improvement where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth. Drawing on interviews with over 200 successful entrepreneurs, executives, and thought leaders, Graban reveals how to transform mistakes into breakthroughs and cultivate a workplace where employees feel safe to experiment, innovate, and take risks.

Far from slowing down, change and transformation in business seems to come only at a more and more furious rate. The last ten years alone have seen the introduction of groundbreaking new trends that pose new opportunities and challenges for leaders in all industries.

Authentic Inclusion™, an idea originated by Frances West, former IBM chief accessibility officer, is defined as the institutional insight that human diversity is at the core of disruptive innovation. It calls for holistic actions across an institution to respect an individual's ability to make a difference despite being different. Frances describes how her personal and professional journey led her to this thinking and work. The book addresses the diversity issues and proposes new ways that business leaders can think about inclusion as human first.

Musicians may just hold the keys to innovation in business. They don’t think like we do, and in the creative process, they don’t act like we do. It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s most respected creators are also entrepreneurs. In Two Beats Ahead, Panos A. Panay, senior vice president for strategy at Berklee College of Music, and R. Michael Hendrix, global design director at IDEO, interview some of the nation’s top musicians and business leaders about how they approach innovation differently.

In his book Driving Eureka!, best-selling business author Doug Hall presents the System Driven Innovation scientific method for enabling innovation by everyone, everywhere, every day. It’s the essential resource you need to enable yourself - and your team - to innovate, succeed, and do amazing things that matter, on a daily basis.

A lot of businesspeople talk about innovation, but few companies have achieved the level of truly transformative innovation as brilliantly - or as famously - as the legendary Mayo Clinic. Introducing Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast, the first innovation guide based on the proven, decade-long program that's made Mayo Clinic one of the most respected and successful organizations in the world.

Becoming the Boss is a brisk, tech-savvy success manual filled with real-world, actionable tips from an expert. Lindsey Pollak defines what Millennial generation leadership is and draws on original research, her own experience, and interviews with young managers and entrepreneurs to share the secrets of what makes them successful leaders - and shows young professionals how to rise in their own careers.

Paul Falcone, author of 101 Sample Write Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems and renowned HR and leadership expert, breaks down the best practices for progressive employee discipline and structured terminations into easy-to-understand steps that will help you avoid common legal and ethical pitfalls.

Toxic workplace, politics making your head spin, and team performance keeping you up at night? Is your bottom-line suffering because people are reluctant to try new approaches? Become a leader whose presence exudes psychological safety and sparks leadership in others. You can be a catalyst for promoting happiness, productivity, financial success, and innovation.

In Innovating Innovation, David Morey, one of America’s leading strategic consultants, will teach, coach, and guide you across 11 concrete and pragmatic steps that unlock and drive day-to-day innovation in your business and help you gain a long-term competitive advantage in your marketplace.

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.

How can great companies do everything right - identify real customer needs, deliver excellent innovations, beat their competitors to market - and still fail? The sad truth is that many companies fail because they focus too intensely on their own innovations, and then neglect the innovation ecosystems on which their success depends. In our increasingly interdependent world, winning requires more than just delivering on your own promises. It means ensuring that a host of partners - some visible, some hidden - deliver on their promises, too.

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.