Innovation Leadership

How much of innovation is inspiration, and how much is hard work? The answer lies somewhere in the middle, says management thinker Peter Drucker. In this HBR classic from 1985, he argues that innovation is real work that can and should be managed like any other corporate function. Success is more likely to result from the systematic pursuit of opportunities than from a flash of genius. Indeed, most innovative business ideas arise through the methodical analysis of seven areas of opportunity.

Annie Hyman Pratt's family business, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, consisted of 7 domestic "mom and pop shops" when she took it over. In just 7 years' time she scaled it by more than 1x, turning it into an international brand of 7+ stores before leading the company through a highly successful sale...

Big Bang Disruptions are new products and services that enter the market better and cheaper than established products, seemingly overnight. Larry Downes and Paul F. Nunes offer critical insights and strategies companies are using not just to protect themselves but to create and appropriate disruptive innovations for themselves. The authors detail the four stages of big bang innovation and show leaders how to see disruptions headed their way - and take action before it’s too late.

A "skillful and lucid" (The Wall Street Journal) way of thinking about efficiency, challenging our obsession with it—and offering a new understanding of how to benefit from the powerful potential of serendipity. Algorithms, multitasking, the sharing economy, life hacks: our culture can't get...

Sales genius is a team sport. As a B2B sales leader, you know that by Murphy’s Law, despite your team's best efforts, some deals will inevitably get stuck or key relationships will go sour. And too often, it's the most important ones—the last thing you need when millions of dollars are on...

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there’s a third team, the linchpins. These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight...

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.

In this Wall Street Journal bestseller, Jessica Herrin, serial entrepreneur and founder and CEO of the Stella & Dot Family Brands, shows how the classic traits of successful entrepreneurs are ones each one of us can develop--and use not only to create a company, but also to create an...

Revolutionize the way you see disruption and change with a groundbreaking alternative to corporate instability from a lauded HR expert. For decades, “disruption” and “change” have been seen as essential to business growth and success. In this provocative and incisive book, Ashley Goodall...

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.

The Art of Change Leadership represents a major milestone in the study of change leadership. An approachable yet thorough guide for leaders and team members that illustrates how to increase speed and agility during times of intense technological innovation and fast change, this resource focuses on the ways in which you, as an individual, can harness your unique abilities to lead cultural change and personal leadership in a positive and proactive way.

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.

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.

In The Creator Mindset, Bashan shows you how to use creativity as a decision-making tool and do so every bit as confidently as you use spreadsheets and data analysis.

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.

In Search of an Adarsh Indian StateIn India, public policies are all around us. Despite this pervasiveness, yeh public sab nahin jaanti hai (the public doesn't know it all).Questions are rarely asked of the Indian State-the institution that makes rules, bends them and punishes others for...

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.

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.

The basis for a major documentary, two leading experts sound an urgent call for the radical reimagining of American education so we can equip students for the realities of the 21st-century economy. “If you read one book about education this decade, make it this one” (Adam Braun, bestselling...

Ori Brafman and management consultant Judah Pollack dramatically demonstrate how even the best and most efficient organizations - from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army - can become more innovative by allowing a little unstructured space and "contained chaos" into their planning and decision-making. Through their consulting work, they realized that while structure and hierarchy are essential both in large corporations and small groups, too much of either can stifle creativity.