Innovation Culture

"See for yourself!" was the clarion call of the 1600s. Natural philosophers threw off the yoke of ancient authority, peered at nature with microscopes and telescopes, and ignited the scientific revolution. Artists investigated nature with lenses and created paintings filled with realistic effects of light and shadow. The hub of this optical innovation was the small Dutch city of Delft.

Life innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species—but there's a catch. Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these 'sleeping beauties' crop up everywhere. But why? Looking at the book of life, from apex predators to keystone crops, and informed by his own cutting-edge experiments, renowned scientist Andreas Wagner demonstrates that innovations can come frequently and cheaply to nature, well before they are needed.

For a period of almost 50 years, from 1945 until the early 1990s, higher education was on an ascent. These “golden years” saw the vast expansion of the opportunity to attend college with the coming of the community college system, the GI Bill, and generous state support that made college affordable for a new generation of upwardly mobile Americans.

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.

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.

An award-winning designer and former Design Lead at the iconic innovation firm IDEO teaches how to use small, creative risks to build trust, inspire connection, and supercharge employee engagement. In a world where safety easily becomes stagnation and risk is seen as a threat, Ben Swire's...

Von der Gründung der USA bis weit ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein arbeiteten die brillantesten Ingenieure und der demokratische Staat zusammen, um Technologien zu entwickeln, die die Welt verändern sollten. Diese Partnerschaft sicherte dem Westen eine beherrschende Stellung in der geopolitischen Ordnung. Doch diese Beziehung ist inzwischen erodiert. Statt die größten Herausforderungen unserer Zeit zu bewältigen, konzentriert sich das Silicon Valley auf den kapitalistischen Verbrauchermarkt.

Through narratives and case studies spanning the brilliant history of engineering, Madhavan shows how the concepts of prototyping, efficiency, reliability, standards, optimization, and feedback are put to use in fields as diverse as transportation, retail, health care, and entertainment. Equal parts personal, practical, and profound, Applied Minds charts a path to a future where we apply strategies borrowed from engineering to create useful and inspired solutions to our most pressing challenges.

Biomimicry, the science of employing nature to advance sustainable technology, is arguably one of the hottest new business concepts. At the center of this growing movement has been award-winning inventor and biomimetic entrepreneur Jay Harman.

The automotive industry is at a crossroads. As the world shifts towards sustainable transport and electric mobility, traditional power structures are being challenged by new players from unexpected places. Among these emerging forces, Chinese automakers have become formidable competitors, not only in their home market, but around the world. Mexico, with its strategic location, skilled workforce, and growing middle class, represents one of the most significant opportunities for international automakers.

Part memoir, part practical guide, and part leadership journey, Love as a Change Strategy takes listeners inside one company's brutally honest transformation story. Through powerful storytelling and actionable tools, the authors reveal what happens when you lead change from a place of love―not fear.

Science and technology have always been central to the plots that make up the world of Bond, and in Superspy Science Kathryn Harkup explores the full range of 007’s exploits and the arms, technologies, tactics and downfalls of his various foes. From the practicalities of building a volcano-based lair, to whether being covered in gold paint really will kill you, and—if your plan is to take over the world—whether it is better to use bacteria, bombs, or poison—this audiobook has all the answers and more.

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.

A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win? Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists - almost all foreign born - are not alone.

But there is a solution. In Rebooting Tech Culture, Whitney explains that the same values at the heart of a culture of innovation—creativity, courage, confidence, curiosity, communication, and community—can also foster a culture that is welcoming to all employees. Drawing on more than fifty interviews with tech executives and a survey of 1,000 people in tech, she shows how these "six Cs" can power real change in technology organizations, creating workplaces where anyone can be successful and where innovation thrives.

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.

How many presentations on innovation have there been recently? Thousands? Millions? We are experiencing 'innovation fatigue': we feel cheated by the endless rounds of consultants who come into our organizations, deliver conceptual models that don't stick with the realities of business and then leave again. Companies and teams are left feeling more deflated than before, and with not one idea that's impacted the bottom line. Innovation for the Fatigued argues it is worth fighting for the concept and study of innovation in organizations.

Gerard Tellis, a noted expert on innovation, advertising, and global markets, makes the compelling case that the culture of a firm is the crucial driver of an organization's innovativeness. In this groundbreaking book he describes the three traits and three practices necessary to create a culture of relentless innovation. Organizations must be willing to cannibalize successful products, embrace risk, and focus on the future. Organizations build these traits by providing incentives for enterprise, empowering product champions, and encouraging internal markets.

New York Times bestselling author and leadership expert Ken Blanchard’s popular TrustWorks! training program is now available in book form! Trust Works!: Four Keys to Building Lasting Relationships is an insightful guide designed to help people navigate one of the most complex issues that...

Few organizations solve as many impossible problems as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and nobody knows more about leading rocket scientists to unlikely breakthroughs than Adam Steltzner. As the phase lead and development manager for EDL (entry, descent, and landing) of the Curiosity rover to Mars, Steltzner spearheaded the creation of one of engineering's wackiest kluges - the sky crane, which allowed the heaviest rover in the history of space exploration to land on Mars unscathed.