Innovation Leadership

It's no secret that continuous innovation is the key to seizing and maintaining the competitive edge in today's increasingly challenging business environment. Unfortunately, the process for achieving this holy grail of business has been a mystery - until now. Built to Innovate delivers a proven system for building relentless innovation into your company's DNA.

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.

Imagine a company where everyone loves to work, where employees feel not just "satisfied" but truly cared for, respected, and energized. Think of the impact this would have on recruitment, retention, customer satisfaction, innovation, and overall performance. Aron Ain, the award-winning CEO of Kronos, a global provider of workforce management and human capital management cloud solutions, believes that anything is possible when people are inspired.

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.

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.

Innovation is no longer the exclusive domain of the Silicon Valley elite. Reverse Innovation will open your eyes to the fact that the dynamics of global innovation are changing-and if you want your firm to survive, you'd better pay attention. The gap between rich nations and emerging economies is closing. No longer will innovations travel the globe in only one direction, from developed to developing nations. They will also flow in reverse.

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.

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.

Customer behaviors, business models, technologies, and regulations are evolving quickly, and many of the strategic rules we formerly lived by have become obsolete. To be able to respond quickly and intelligently to the fast pace of change, we need all levels and functions in our businesses to be creative and responsive. We need both courage and speed. Fearless Growth provides new rules to enable your company to adapt faster, move faster, and grow faster.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mind Tools for Managers helps new and experienced leaders develop the skills they need to be more effective in everything they do. It brings together the 100 most important leadership skills - as voted for by 15,000 managers and professionals worldwide - into a single volume, providing an easy-access solutions manual for people wanting to be the best manager they can be. Each chapter details a related group of skills, plus the tools you need to put ideas into practice.

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.

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.

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.

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.