Turn team members into innovators Most organizations approach innovation as if it were a sideline activity. Every so often employees are sent to “Brainstorm Island”: an off-site replete with trendy lectures, creative workshops, and overenthusiastic facilitators. But once they return, it’s back to business as usual. Innovation experts Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg suggest a better approach. They recommend that leaders at all levels become “innovation architects,” creating an ecosystem in which people engage in key innovation behaviors as part of their daily work. In short, this book is about getting to a state of “innovation as usual,” where regular employees—in jobs like finance, marketing, sales, or operations—make innovation happen in a way that’s both systemic and sustainable. Instead of organizing brainstorming sessions, idea jams, and off-sites that rarely result in success, leaders should guide their people in what the authors call the “5 + 1 keystone behaviors” of innovation: focus, connect, tweak, select, stealthstorm, (and the + 1) persist: • Focus beats freedom: Direct people to look only for ideas that matter to the business • Insight comes from the outside: Urge people to connect to new worlds • First ideas are flawed: Challenge people to tweak and reframe their initial ideas • Most ideas are bad ideas: Guide people to select the best ideas and discard the rest • Stealthstorming rules: Help people navigate the politics of innovation • Creativity is a choice: Motivate everyone to persist in the five keystone behaviors Using examples from a wide range of companies such as Pfizer, Index Ventures, Lonza, Go Travel, Prehype, DSM, and others, Innovation as Usual lights the way toward embedding creativity in the DNA of the workplace. So cancel that off-site. Instead, read Innovation as Usual—and put innovation at the core of your business.

Help business leaders encourage their teams to be more innovative by changing the way they work, including focusing better, connecting with others, tweaking one's responses to challenges, filtering the good from the bad, navigating company politics and persisting despite obstacles. 15,000 first printing.

"The author makes a compelling case that we often start solving a problem before thinking deeply about whether we are solving the right problem. If you want the superpower of solving better problems, read this book." -- Eric Schmidt, former CEO, Google Are you solving the right problems? Have you or your colleagues ever worked hard on something, only to find out you were focusing on the wrong problem entirely? Most people have. In a survey, 85 percent of companies said they often struggle to solve the right problems. The consequences are severe: Leaders fight the wrong strategic battles. Teams spend their energy on low-impact work. Startups build products that nobody wants. Organizations implement "solutions" that somehow make things worse, not better. Everywhere you look, the waste is staggering. As Peter Drucker pointed out, there's nothing more dangerous than the right answer to the wrong question. There is a way to do better. The key is reframing, a crucial, underutilized skill that you can master with the help of this book. Using real-world stories and unforgettable examples like "the slow elevator problem," author Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg offers a simple, three-step method - Frame, Reframe, Move Forward - that anyone can use to start solving the right problems. Reframing is not difficult to learn. It can be used on everyday challenges and on the biggest, trickiest problems you face. In this visually engaging, deeply researched book, you’ll learn from leaders at large companies, from entrepreneurs, consultants, nonprofit leaders, and many other breakthrough thinkers. It's time for everyone to stop barking up the wrong trees. Teach yourself and your team to reframe, and growth and success will follow.

Innovation, the conversion of the new to business as usual, is a very special business process. It is the business process able to reprogram all others. Creating the practices that make this process work is a key challenge for all in financial services that are worried about responding to the future. When an institution can identify things that are outside its present practices and convert them, production line style, into products, processes, cultural changes, or new markets, it will never be outpaced by internal or external change again. The institution becomes "FutureProof". This is a book about those practices in banks. It explains, using examples from institutions around the world, what it takes to create an innovation culture that consistently introduces new things into undifferentiated markets and internal cultures. It shows how banks can leverage the power of the new to establish unexpected revenue lines, or make old ones grow. And it provides advice on the social and political factors that either help or hinder the germination of the new in banks. Moreover, though, this is a book about the science of innovation in a banking context. Drawing from practices already highly developed in financial services—managing portfolios of assets to mitigate risk—it explains how practitioners can run their innovations groups like any other business line in the bank one that delivers a return on investment predictably and at high multiples of internal cost of capital. For leaders, Innovation and the Future Proof Bank provides the diagnostic tools to guide benchmarking and investment decisions for the innovation function. And for innovation practitioners, the book lays out everything needed to make sure that converting the new to business as usual is predictable, measurable, and profitable.

A guide to creating and sustaining a culture of innovation focused on business value The Innovator’s Path introduces business readers to thought leader Madge M. Meyer’s unique, cross-cultural perspective on corporate innovation. The book presents eight essential disciplines (Listen, Lead, Position, Promote, Connect, Commit, Execute, and Evolve) that pave the way for individuals, teams, and organizations to continually innovate in ways that create new business value. The author overturns existing assumptions about inspiring and managing innovation, while offering new insights and practical advice for aspiring innovators and corporate leaders. Meyer demonstrates her points by telling the stories behind many of her award-winning results and adds engaging personal anecdotes to illustrate many of her points. The book also contains contributions from an extraordinary and diverse set of industry innovators. Offers new ways for cultivating a mindset and culture of results-focused innovation and business value creation Equips CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CMOs, COOs, CTOs and aspiring innovators with proven principles and practices for leading innovation Focuses her readers' attention on the eight essential disciplines that help individuals, teams, and organizations innovate more successfully Whether your focus is on your career, your team's success, or your organization's future, The Innovator’s Path provides you with the insights, strategies, techniques, and inspiration you need to accelerate your innovation progress.

In today’s frenetic, uncertain world, the “same old, same old” routines are perfect ways to go nowhere fast. What has worked for you before—professionally or personally—no longer gets results. Whether you’ve been downsized, reached the end of a long relationship, or found yourself questioning where you are in life, it’s clear you need to change. To innovate. Make it new. Make yourself new. Now, in this invaluable book, the world-renowned “Dean of Innovation,” Jeff DeGraff, shares his tried-and-true techniques on how to reinvent yourself—creatively and with maximum impact. Innovation You reveals DeGraff’s unique four-step program to bolster your ingenuity and remake your life. From forging ahead in a new career to losing weight to finally pursuing that long-held dream, DeGraff’s strategies are effective and easy to follow. Inside you will learn to • Rethink Innovation: Find ways to think outside the box, seek out diverse opinions, and pay attention to the next great trend. • Rethink Your Approach: Use the Competing Values Framework to identify your natural innovation profile—do you compete, collaborate, create, or control?—and then deliberately draw from the other styles to augment your usual tactics. • Rethink Your Methods: Put your reinvention plan in motion—set specific, realistic, and meaningful targets, cultivate relationships with relevant mentors and experts, and try alternate methods to achieve your goals. • Rethink the Journey: Understand that innovation is a process and that progress comes in cycles rather than a quick straight line. Accept uncertainty, question assumptions, and acknowledge areas where you can improve. Full of invigorating ideas, engaging anecdotes, practical wisdom, and inspiring success stories, Innovation You is your personal road map to reach your highest potential—and experience a bold new way of living.

In the ever-changing world of business, we've arrived at a point where process has trumped culture, where the race toward efficiency has left us unable to reach our potential. Stuck in the land of status quo, we've forgotten how to think. The very structures put in place to help businesses grow are now holding us back;; it's time to Kill the Company. This book is a call to arms: to start a revolution in how we think and work. But instead of more one-size-fits-all change initiatives forced upon employees, we need to embrace small changes that create ripple effects throughout the organization. Lisa Bodell urges companies to move from "Zombies, Inc." to "Think, Inc." Thinking can no longer be exclusive to the creative team or lead strategists. A culture of curiosity must be fostered among the ranks to shake up our standard practices, from unproductive meetings to go-nowhere strategic planning. This revolution can and will awaken our ability to think, and ultimately, to innovate and grow.