Tag Archives: innovation book

The Best Tools For Low Risk Innovation

innovation tools bookLEGO has earned the right to celebrate. Not only are kids playing with more mini LEGO people than there are human beings on the planet but in 2015, they were nominated by Forbes as the most powerful brand in the world. For a company which was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2004, the toy maker has made an amazing turnaround. They restructured, hired a new CEO, and forged more licensing partnerships than ever before. Most importantly, they discovered the secret to some of the world’s most successful company and reducing attrition in the call center and low risk innovation strategies.

Innovation Book Review: Disruption Revolution

disruption revolutionDiversity breeds innovation, and as I stated a few weeks ago when I shared with you a list of 10 books about innovation that I recommend you read, it is best for you to look far and wide about the type of content that you read.

Right now, the hunger for anything innovation is huge. There are enough sources that it is hard to decide what to follow and what not to read! In the last few months I’ve read material from other authors that just isn’t innovative. It’s just repackaging.

How many more books about innovation does the world need?

Innovation book review: The Innovation Expedition by @gijsvanwulfen

The innovation expedition Gijs Van WulfenThere are a multitude of innovation books that are either published or are going to be published with something along the lines of  “innovation lessons from ___fill in the blank with a famous person’s name___”.

These are typical books that provide tips and principles to follow. Nothing wrong with that, except that there are too many that come to the same conclusions. There are others though, that do present a different concept.

Gijs Van Wulfen sent me his newest book last month, I think it is very cool. Called “The Innovation Expedition: A Visual Toolkit to Start Innovation“, consist of a visual journey through Gijs FORTH Innovation method. Which is all about “How to get started with innovation effectively“.

The Innovators DNA: Interview with Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen

innovator's dna

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to interview the authors of the bestselling innovation book, The Innovator’s DNA.  Below is the transcript of what I was able to record from our call.

Before, here is short bio of each author:

Hal Gregersen is the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Chair of Innovation and Leadership at INSEAD and Jeff Dyer is the Horace Beesley Professor of Strategy at BYU’s Marriott School of Management. They are co-authors of The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators and most recently worked together on Innovator’s Accelerator, an online executive education experience designed to develop individuals’ and organizations’ innovation skills.

From periodic innovation to relentless innovation

How can your company become a relentless innovator? How do you sustain innovation over long periods of time like Apple, 3M and Google?

Jeffrey Phillips of Innovation Consultancy OVO, persuasively writes that the way to create a sustainable innovation capability in large organizations is by turning what keeps your wheels running, middle management, into innovation Champions.

Not easy. But that’s the main premise of the book. And it is this reason alone why I think this is a must read book. While there are other authors who have touched on the topic of management as an inhibitor to innovation, Jeffrey really goes a lot deeper.

Other books on innovation either deal with the pretty part of ideation or they’re all over the place. Relentless Innovation is easy to read with many interesting case studies and practical advice. This is a very focused book and addresses the ‘how’ to create culture of innovation within a large and complex organization.

Innovation Book review: Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

stoking innovation bonfire book

I had the opportunity to receive an advanced copy of  Braden Kelley’s (@innovate) new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire a few weeks ago and I just finished reading.

While other books take a more high level approach to innovation, what I noticed is different with Braden’s book is his focus on eliminating the obstacles that prevent innovation from happening in an organization. This approach is easier to digest for the layman because it’s focused on anticipating problems they’ll immediately relate to as opposed to other books that take a more ‘big ideas’ approach. And there’s not a lot of the jargon that plagues other books on innovation.

The book has easy to follow checklists, summaries and simple to understand innovation use cases that you can come back to and won’t lose a beat. It covers the important stuff such as how to embed innovation into your organizational culture and how to sustain it.

Braden also added useful frameworks at the end of the book to provide the reader a solid road map to start with. It’s this practical approach that gives the book it’s value. You’ll just get it!

Whether you work in a big or small organization, Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is a must read for both novice and experts alike. And with the need to get educated in the art of innovation and making it an integral part of your organization, Braden’s book should be on your reading list. Go get it!

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Build innovation into the core of your business

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Imagine that your organization is an innovation powerhouse. Imagine that other companies adopt your strategies and not the other way around. Imagine that every single person in your organization is hailed as an innovator. Too good to be true right?

Not so.

The Grifters trailer Peter Pan rip

18 Year Old Virgin Author Rowan Gibson and Peter Skarzynski set out to jumpstart your innovation efforts in their book . Distilled from various examples of companies that ‘DO’ innovation, they present a blueprint that we can use and also ‘DO’ innovation. But before you set out to ‘DO’ innovation you want to start with creating the conditions to foster innovation, then develop the skills you need to innovate and then a process to bring it all together and produce new products and services. Innovation to the core shows you how!

Pragmatic is the key word to describe the contents of this book, written as a guide this is THE best book I’ve read on enterprise innovation and have recommended it more times than I can remember. I actually used the chapter on business model innovation to give a friend of mine a big picture view of his and brainstorm new approaches to compete.

Over the Top rip

If you’re familiar with Gary Hamel’s work from Competing for the Future, Leading the Revolution and The Future of Management you’ll absolutely want to read Innovation to the Core. Most of those insights are presented here in such a simple way that any startup or lone entrepreneur, small business that wants to grow, the mid-size business and the corporate juggernauts can put to use.

It has a 5 star rating at Amazon and with good reasons. The people, the skills and the process it’s all here.

You should on Twitter and let him know what you think.