Career Innovation

Nearly all of today’s major innovation workshops and programs call on organizations to drive innovation. What they miss is that innovation comes from the personal creativity of individuals. And creativity doesn’t require an advanced education or technical skills. All employees can be creative. Often, all they lack is a fitting mindset and the right skills.

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.

Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there's very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach.

Knowledge workers are the innovators, designers and marketers of your company's products and services. They are the highly paid strategists, executives, and IT specialists whose ideas and expertise fuel your success. But are they delivering their best performance?

Published in more than two dozen countries, How to Change the World has become a bible for the field of social entrepreneurship. It tells the stories of people building innovative and pattern-changing solutions to social and economic problems.

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.

A powerful new kind of competitive advantage is now possible thanks to technological and social disruptions that are already occurring. These disruptions revolutionize how companies can partner to create new growth. The Reciprocity Advantage shares a model for creating that growth: define your right-of-way (the underutilized resources you already own that you can share with others), partner to do what you can't do alone, experiment to learn, and scale the new business at low risk.

As leaders or parents (or both), navigating difficult conversations is part of our job description. How do we keep calm and achieve a productive outcome, all while keeping our relationships intact? The secret is curiosity. It is the innovation-driving, emotion-calming skill that comes so naturally to us as kids but gets buried so easily beneath our busy, multitasking lifestyles as adults. The good news is that we just have to relearn what we already know!

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.

In The Innovator's Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor expand on the idea of disruption, explaining how companies can and should become disruptors themselves. Now with a foreword by innovation expert Scott Anthony, this classic work shows just how timely and relevant these ideas continue to be in today's hyper-accelerated business environment and will help anyone trying to transform their business right now.

Does AI feel too complex to understand? Are you overwhelmed by jargon or worried about being left behind? If so, this audiobook is for you. With clear, practical guidance, Artificial Intelligence for Beginners makes AI accessible for everyone. Whether you’re a non-tech professional or a lifelong learner, this audiobook demystifies AI without overwhelming you. Learn how AI can enhance your capabilities, streamline your life, and open up new opportunities.

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.

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.

Let’s be real—you don’t need another self-help book telling you to “work harder” or “stay disciplined.” You need a damn strategy that actually makes you WANT to do the things that move the needle in your life. Enter gamification. This isn’t some tech bro jargon or a gimmick that fades faster than a New Year’s resolution. This is a battle-tested system designed to make even the most mundane tasks feel like an epic quest.

What do people and businesses need to know about the realities of innovating in order to develop products successfully? Lorraine Marchand—a seasoned practitioner who has guided Fortune 500 companies and start-ups on developing and launching new ideas—lays out a step-by-step framework for spurring success. She shares her eight laws of innovation, a formula for driving significant and lasting transformation in any organization. Marchand emphasizes the frame of mind needed to spark the innovation process.

على مدار السنوات العشر الماضية، كنا منغمسين بعمق في دراسة الابتكار داخل المؤسسات القائمة. لا يمكننا أن نفكر في موضوع أفضل نكرس له طاقاتنا. فمن خلال الابتكار، يمكن لمنظمات الأعمال تغيير العالم

هناك مشكلة صغيرة واحدة فقط. وهي أن منظمات الأعمال ليست مبنية من أجل الابتكار؛ بل من أجل الكفاءة. الضغوط اليومية هائلة، والجمع بين نظام الكفاءة ونظام الابتكار أمر صعب للغاية

In the ever-changing world of business, we've arrived at a point where process has trumped culture, where the race toward efficiency has made us complacent and unable to reach our potential. Stuck in the land of status quo, we've forgotten how to think. And the very structures put in place to help businesses grow are now holding them back. It's time to Kill the Company. What this audiobook suggests is simple: to SIMPLIFY by getting rid of things first rather than continually building on what doesn't work; a form of spring cleaning for your organization.

Written by the former Executive Creative Director of Creations at Cirque du Soleil, this audiobook shows you how to step up your game, flex your creativity, and make big things happen. Whether you work independently or as part of a team, whether you're self-employed or part of an organization, and even if you think creativity isn't a part of the work that you do - this book gives you the perspective, courage, and kick-start you need to think differently about the things you do every day.

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.

Jobs to Be Done gives you a clear-cut framework for thinking about your business, outlines a road map for discovering new markets, new products, and new services, and helps you generate creative opportunities to innovate your way to success.