“Leapfrogging is as much about the secrets of breakthrough leadership as it is about business innovation . . . loaded with fresh ideas and examples.” —Hans Middag, Director, Learning and Development, Randstad In his trailblazing debut, Soren Kaplan gives business leaders the tools to do exactly what they’re taught to avoid: embrace surprise—the new key to business breakthroughs. Instead of fighting against uncertainty, Kaplan reveals how to use it to break down limiting mindsets and barriers to change the game. By highlighting specific ways to transform both good and bad surprises into unique opportunities, Kaplan encourages leaders to compete by embracing counterintuitive ideas, managing paradoxes, and even welcoming failure. This is the key to “leapfrogging” —creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward. Leapfrogging connects new research, unconventional strategies, and practical tools for navigating the “messy” and elusive process of achieving business breakthroughs. Filled with real-world examples from innovators such as Gatorade, Intuit, Philips, Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive, OpenTable, and Etsy, Kaplan shows that any organization or business function can leapfrog. Using his LEAPS process (Listen, Explore, Act, Persist, and Seize), leaders learn to seek out, recognize, and respond to surprising experiences and events as a way to create solutions that leap beyond the current expectations of customers, partners, employees, the market, and the competition. Kaplan’s Leapfrogging is the new handbook for the modern leader. “Superbly crafted, powerful in its simplicity, offering smart, actionable learning . . . Finally, a simple, holistic model that allows for breakthrough thinking and living.” —Mary Beth Robles, Vice President, Colgate-Palmolive “His campaigning for fearless innovation and flexibility is compelling.” —Publishers Weekly

For women entrepreneurs (and anyone sick of the status quo), this smart, unapologetic collection delivers fifty proven hacks to leapfrog over obstacles and succeed in business. "A must-read for any woman who has a great idea and the nagging thought that doors are closed to her; Molina Niño helps to blow them open."--Publishers Weekly Think the most critical factor for becoming a great entrepreneur is grit, risk-taking, or technical skills? Think again. Despite what every other business book might say, historical data show the real secret ingredients to getting ahead in business are being rich, white, and male. Until now. Leapfrog is the decades-overdue startup bible for the rest of us. It's filled with uncompromising guidance for winning at business, your way. Leapfrog is for entrepreneurs of all stripes who are fed up with status quo advice--the kind that assumes you have rich friends and family and a public relations team. Refreshingly frank and witty, author Nathalie Molina Niño is a serial tech entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of BRAVA Investments, and a proud daughter of Latinx immigrants. While teaching budding entrepreneurs at Barnard College at Columbia University and searching the globe for investment-worthy startups, she has met or advised thousands of entrepreneurs who've gone from zero to scalable business. Here she shares their best secrets in the form of fifty "leapfrogs"--clever loopholes and shortcuts to outsmart, jump over, or straight up annihilate the seemingly intractable hurdles facing entrepreneurs who don't have family money, cultural capital, or connections.

Exemplary stories of innovation from around the world In an age of rising inequality, getting a good education increasingly separates the haves from the have nots. In countries like the United States, getting a good education is one of the most promising routes to upper-middle-class status, even more so than family wealth. Experts predict that by 2030, 825 million children will reach adulthood without basic secondary-level skills, and it will take a century for the most marginalized youth to achieve the educational levels that the wealthiest enjoy today. But these figures do not even account for the range of skills and competencies needed to thrive today in work, citizenship, and life. In a world where the ability to manipulate knowledge and information, think critically, and collaboratively solve problems are essential to thrive, access to a quality education is crucial for all young people. In Leapfrogging Inequality, researchers chart a new path for global education by examining the possibility of leapfrogging—harnessing innovation to rapidly accelerate educational progress—to ensure that all young people develop the skills they need for a fast-changing world. Analyzing a catalog of nearly 3,000 global education innovations, the largest such collection to date, researchers explore the potential of current practices to enable such a leap. As part of this analysis, the book presents an evidence-based framework for getting ahead in education, which it grounds in the here-and-now by narrating exemplary stories of innovation from around the world. Together, these stories and resources will inspire educators, investors, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, and policymakers alike to rally around a new vision of educational progress—one that ensures we do not leave yet another generation of young people behind.

An elegant argument for a bold new economic direction

Ever since Schumpeter’s groundbreaking work there has been a plethora of new research seeking to extend the direction and dynamics of innovation. Using a rich account of detailed interviews, this book offers new evidence on how latecomers have successfully caught up and leapfrogged incumbent firms. Catching Up and Leapfrogging: the new latecomers in the integrated circuits industry explores how technological transitions affect latecomer catch-up strategies, and vice versa, in a high technology industry. It looks to the East Asian latecomers who, towards the end of the twentieth century, pioneered a new pathway through organizational change by specializing in the key production stages of integrated circuits and pushing technologies further. This volume assesses how latecomer resource acquisition strategies have varied alongside structural industry changes and evaluates the mechanisms through which firms started life as technology followers and rose to become technology leaders. Xiao-Shan Yap and Rajah Rasiah present a unique story about how firm strategies evolve from the catching up phase to the leapfrogging phase, captured from the accounts of managers on the ground. It is the first time firm-level strategies have been systematically analysed to describe twenty-first century strategic management in the integrated circuits industry in particular, and the high tech industry in general. The evidence and analysis in this book offers insights for chief executive officers, policy-makers and researchers to revisit existing approaches to the theory of catching up and leapfrogging.

'We are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society, and the courage to leapfrog to state-of-the-art engineering and technology pursuits rather than step-by-step scientific developments.' These famous words of Dr Vikram Sarabhai propel every initiative of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The Leapfroggers, too, is an outcome of the same spirit. Featured in the book is Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the first Project Director of SLV-3, India's most prestigious space project in the 1970s. Ved Prakash Sandlas was part of Kalam's core team and eventually took over from him after the first successful launch in 1980. Sandlas was one of the first engineers to join ISRO in its formative years in the 1960s. In this book, he reflects on the ISRO culture: the styles, values and characteristics of its people; their aspirations and ambitions; and their beliefs, prejudices, superstitions and limitations. Woven with interesting anecdotes and scientific detail, The Leapfroggers is the human story of ISRO's and India's technological advancement.

Today's business environment demands leapfroggers - those who create rapid, disruptive innovation, not small improvements. A leading innovation pioneer shows that businesses often ignore the very thing that could lead them to game - changing products - the power of surprise....