Book Summary Library

The Innovator's Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation

The Innovator's Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation Peter J. Denning and Robert Dunham The ruling buzzword in business today is innovation.  Technology companies invest billions in developing new gadgets.  Business leaders see innovation as a key to gaining a competitive edge.  And policymakers craft regulations to foster a climate of innovation. And yet, businesses report a...

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries Peter Sims Most creative professionals and entrepreneurs have one trait in common:  They make a series of little bets about what might be a good direction, and then learn from minor failures and small wins that allow them to arrive at extraordinary outcomes. By contrast, the majority of people believe they have to...

How Companies Win: Profiting From Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You're In

How Companies Win: Profiting From Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You're In Rick Kash & David Calhoun For the past 20 years, the growth formula for business has been to increase revenues by expanding product offerings and streamlining supply. But today, in a time of recession and digitization, the new challenge is to locate and capture "pools of high-profit demand." How...

Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System To Drive Breakthrough Creativity

Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System To Drive Breakthrough Creativity Josh Linkner Today, creativity is more important than ever, but most companies are creatively bankrupt.  They constantly focus on cost-cutting, efficiency gains, and top-down control.  The problem is made even worse by the ever-escalating arms race for competitive edge.  When the dust settles, the only thing...

What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation To Create Breakthrough Products And Services

What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation To Create Breakthrough Products And Services Anthony Ulwick For decades, companies have been using customer "requirements" to guide growth and innovation, yet failure rates are still high and breakthroughs are still rare. What's the solution? Ignore the "voice of the customer." Instead focus on the "jobs customers need to get done" and...

Service Innovation: How To Go From Customer Needs To Breakthrough Services

Service Innovation: How To Go From Customer Needs To Breakthrough Services Lance A. Bettancourt Businesses don’t succeed by inventing a better mousetrap.  They succeed by finding the best, most cost-effective way to get rid of their customers’ mice. In industries ranging from health care to heavy machinery to financial services, service innovation is about finding new revenue streams...

Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible

Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible Daniel Burrus with John David Mann Today, we all face more impossible challenges than ever before.  But with the weapon of flash foresight, you can transform the impossible into the possible, revealing hidden opportunities and enabling you to solve your biggest problems before they happen. Our summary of Flash Foresight, by...

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm Tom Kelley Tom Kelley is General Manager of IDEO, the state of the art Silicon Valley design firm. This summary unlocks IDEO's magic box of innovation for corporate America. At a time when creativity and innovation are the driving forces for the economy, he shows how IDEO does it, and how companies...

Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs

Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott Sensational products and services like the iPod, the Wii, Starbucks, and FedEx became successful as soon as they reached the market.  Were the people who created those breakthroughs smarter, luckier, or born with more talent than the rest of us?  No. Our summary of Tuned In,...

Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small

Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres The new book Why Not? Is a primer for fresh business thinking, for problem-solving with a purpose, and for bringing the world a few steps closer to the way it should be. The book’s co-authors are bi-monthly columnists for Forbes magazine. Barry Nalebuff is a professor of economics at...

The Innovator’s Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth

The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, and Neil DeCarlo To grow your company, you need a system for innovation.  Our summary of The Innovator’s Toolkit, by David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, and Neil DeCarlo, explains several tools and concepts that anyone involved with innovation should know.  These...

The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World

The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney More and more executives are recognizing the urgent importance of reaching beyond the four walls of their business to tap new sources of creativity and innovation. However, it isn’t easy to translate this need into actions that are tailored to your...

Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others

Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others David Kord Murray When was the last time you thought of a truly new and innovative idea, something that no one else in the world has ever thought of?  Think about it.  The answer is probably never, because there is no such thing as a truly original idea. Great thinkers throughout history...

World Out of Balance: Navigating Global Risks to Seize Competitive Advantage

World Out of Balance: Navigating Global Risks to Seize Competitive Advantage Paul A. Laudicina In the first decade of the 21st century, the entire game of business is changing yet again as the vast uncertainties of the global marketplace loom ahead. The question is not whether a successful company will need to operate globally; it is how a company must act in order to grasp opportunities...

Heads Up: How to Anticipate Business Surprises and Seize Opportunities First

Heads Up: How to Anticipate Business Surprises and Seize Opportunities First Kenneth McGee Managers strive to avoid surprises, yet they keep occurring with unprecedented frequency -- and sometimes with devastating consequences. Surprises happen even though modern managers regularly get buried in information. In business, the unpleasant surprises range from product launch disasters --...

Breakthrough: How Great Companies Set Outrageous Objectives and Achieve Them

Breakthrough: How Great Companies Set Outrageous Objectives and Achieve Them Bill Davidson “Breakthrough” is a military term that refers to an offensive thrust that carries beyond a defensive line. In a general sense, it means a profound advance in technique or knowledge. It is also the bedrock of business success. Great corporations-from Standard Oil to Amazon-take radical...

Technotrends: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition

Technotrends: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition Daniel Burrus Technotrends describes how to creatively apply the new tools of technology to creative the products, services, markets, and careers that will revitalize your business and the American economy. Burrus conclusively demonstrates the need for all of us to understand and utilize the new technological tools that will...

Breakthrough Business Results with MVT: A Fast, Cost-Free, “Secret Weapon” for Boosting Sales, Cutting Expenses, and Improving Any Business Process

Breakthrough Business Results with MVT: A Fast, Cost-Free, "Secret Weapon" for Boosting Sales, Cutting Expenses, and Improving Any Business Process Charles Holland with David Cochran Every executive in the world shares the same goal: improved results through lower costs, better quality, higher customer satisfaction, and bigger profits. But only one revolutionary method offers a powerful,...

Lateral Marketing: New Techniques for Finding Breakthrough Ideas

Today’s marketers face a difficult challenge: how to innovate in a hyper-competitive, super-segmented marketplace. Traditional vertical marketing – with its emphasis on market segmentation and brand proliferation – is leading to one failure after another. Now, in Lateral Marketing, renowned marketers Philip Kotler and Fernando Trias de Bes present a new system for developing breakthrough opportunities. While vertical marketing helps companies find increasingly smaller subgroups for which a product might be developed, lateral marketing points the way to developing an entirely new product that finds a much wider audience. Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. He is considered the father of modern marketing and is the author of two dozen books. Fernando Trias de Bes is founder and Partner of Salvetti & Llombart, a firm specializing in consulting and market research with an international scope and clients such as PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey & Company, Nestle, and Dannon. Among the many examples of lateral marketing we’ll explore in this summary are innovations like cereal bars, pull-up diapers, and Barbie dolls. The new marketing concepts that led to these products are the direct result of a different creative process than the endless vertical segmentation of yesterday. This does not mean that we need to discard traditional marketing thinking. Instead, the goal is to incorporate lateral thinking as an additional platform for discovering marketing ideas. As we explore these new concepts, you’ll learn how to beat the high odds of product failure and achieve breakthrough success.

Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing

Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing Steve Cuno Every day, CEOs, marketing VPs, and other corporate decision makers commit huge marketing budgets to advertising campaigns based on nothing more than someone's gut intuition, on an ad agency's saying, "Trust us; we're the experts and we think this will work." But the fact is, most marketers, on...

The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care

The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care Clayton M. Christensen, Jerome H. Grossman, M.D. and Jason Hwang, M.D. In 1997, Clayton Christensen changed the way managers think about business innovation with his landmark book, The Innovator's Dilemma, in which he explained that innovative new products that transform entire markets typically do not emerge from the...

22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand

22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand Al Ries & Laura Ries Branding is the only realistic way to cut through the clutter in today's insanely crowded marketplace. And nobody understands branding better than Al Ries. In this summary you'll find answers to the crucial branding questions that face every business.

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations James Surowiecki In our summary of The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, we‘ll explore a deceptively simple idea that has profound consequences: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant those few are. Groups...

Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation Robert I. Sutton Hire people you dislike. Encourage employees to ignore and defy their superiors. Find some happy people and get them to fight. Avoid, distract, and bore your customers. Those are just a few of the counterintuitive ideas offered by Stanford Engineering School professor Robert I....

FutureThink: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change

FutureThink: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change Edie Weiner and Arnold Brown Now, more than ever, it’s important to see what’s really happening around you -- so that you can anticipate waves of change and then ride them to unprecedented success. But in order to understand the present and manage the future, you’ll first need to overcome the personal and institutional...

Shake That Brain!: How to Create Winning Solutions and Have Fun While You’re At It

Shake That Brain!: How to Create Winning Solutions and Have Fun While You're At It Joel Saltzman Today, more than ever, we're challenged to find and implement winning solutions -- to stay competitive in a fast-changing world. Yet, relatively little attention is being paid to helping people develop solution-finding skills. To fill this gap, best-selling author, consultant, and...

Driving Growth Through Innovation

Driving Growth Through Innovation Robert B. Tucker Only companies that can consistently bring innovative new products to market will continue to grow and thrive in a rapidly changing economy. Yet, most companies today are frustrated by their inability to turn ideas into profitable realities. Their 'innovation process' is almost an oxymoron. In reality it is ad hoc, piecemeal,...

The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success

The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success Carmine Gallo By following Steve Jobs’ visionary example, you’ll discover exciting new ways to unlock your creative potential, foster an environment that encourages innovation, and allow it to flourish. You’ll learn how to match – and beat – the most powerful competitors, develop the most...

The Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine… And What Smart Companies Are Doing About It

The Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine... And What Smart Companies Are Doing About It Cynthia Barton Rabe Today’s companies face a paradox: They need knowledge in order to innovate. And yet, knowledge kills innovation. How can this be? Companies and teams rely on “what we know” and “the way we do things here” to speed decision-making and...

Innovation That Fits: Moving Beyond the Fads to Choose the RIGHT Innovation Strategy for Your Business

Innovation that Fits: Moving Beyond the Fads to Choose the RIGHT Innovation Strategy for Your Business Michael D. Lord, J. Donald deBethizy, and Jeffrey D. Wager Whether you’re a corporate executive or an entrepreneur, one of your top priorities must be to achieve long-term growth through innovation. The expression “Innovate or die” sums up the reality today. But most people in...

Innovation X: Why a Company’s Toughest Problems Are Its Greatest Advantage

Innovation X: Why a Company's Toughest Problems Are Its Greatest Advantage Adam Richardson Today, more than ever, innovation is at the heart of business success.  Yet, all too many innovations get stalled, squashed, sidetracked, or warped beyond recognition by byzantine organizational processes and decision-making edifices. Some companies have attempted to deal with these internal roadblocks...

Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change

Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change Erik A. Roth, Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony In The Innovator‘s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen developed a theory that explained why successful companies are often unseated by disruptive innovations. In The Innovator‘s Solution, he outlined a process that would-be innovators can use to launch such...

Radical Innovation: How Mature Companies Can Outsmart Upstarts

Radical Innovation: How Mature Companies Can Outsmart Upstarts Richard Leifer, Christopher M. McDermott, Gina Colarelli O'Connor, Lois S. Peters, Mark P. Rice, and Robert W. Veryzer How many big businesses have pioneered today's latest technologies and business models? Hardly any! This summary, based on the results from a five-year, real-time study of innovation in 10 major corporations ...

Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming, and How to Prevent Them

Were the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001predictable -- or were they a surprise? And what about the rapid death spirals of Enron and Arthur Andersen? In each case, they were “predictable surprises.” Predictable means that there were enough warning signs to suggest that a tragedy was likely. Surprise means that organizations didn’t view the signs with enough urgency to prevent the tragedy. In our riveting summary of Predictable Surprises, Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins of Harvard Business School, who are leading experts in managerial decision making, explain why predictable surprises are so common in business and society. They also provide a systematic framework that leaders can use to recognize and prioritize brewing disasters and mobilize their organizations to prevent them. In human, organizational, and economic costs, predictable surprises can be devastating. So, it’s up to leaders to anticipate -- and avoid -- them. This summary will show you how to do that by using a three-step framework to avoid predictable surprises:

• Recognize emerging threats.
• Prioritize those threats.
• Mobilize to prevent the threats from becoming a reality.

The Next Economy: Will You Know Where Your Customers Are?

The Next Economy: Will You Know Where Your Customers Are? Elliott Ettenberg The New Economy is already history. Tomorrow's profits will be made in the Next Economy. As the graying Baby Boomers reach retirement age and stop spending, the competition for customers will intensify. The winners will build marketing strategies around the "four Rs": relationships, retrenchment, relevancy,...

The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures

To discover breakthrough new ideas, innovators often step into the intersection. At the intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, they combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. Author and consultant Frans Johansson has named this phenomenon “The Medici Effect,” which comes from a remarkable burst of creativity in 15th century Italy. The Medicis were a banking family in Florence who funded creators from a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to this family and a few others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence. There they learned from each other and broke down barriers between disciplines and cultures. Together they forged a world of new ideas -- what became known as the Renaissance. As an individual, as part of a team, or as the leader of an organization, you can also take advantage of the Medici Effect. You can do it by bringing together different disciplines and cultures, and then searching for the places where they connect. In the next 45 minutes, you will discover how to find such intersectional ideas and make them happen. You will also learn how to:

• Break down barriers and view problems in new ways;
• Randomly, but purposefully, combine diverse concepts;
• Walk away from familiar networks and venture into the unknown; and
• Execute beyond failures to make new ideas happen at the intersection.

Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors

Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors Evan I. Schwartz Invention has fueled the progress of humankind throughout history. The same thinking patterns that produced breakthroughs from the steam engine to the gene sequencer will spawn the inventions on which we‘ll build the future. But what drives invention? Where does the mental leap, the breakthrough, the...

The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor In the worldwide best-seller The Innovator's Dilemma, Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen exposed a crushing paradox behind the failure of many industry leaders. By doing what good companies were supposed to do -- focus on pleasing their most profitable...

How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate

The most innovative companies create revolutionary breakthroughs year after year. But do they start with a blank sheet of paper and invent totally new technologies and products? No! Instead, they simply find established ideas from other industries that can be applied in new ways and places. For example, the idea for Henry Ford's famous automobile assembly line didn't come out of "thin air." He borrowed processes that were already being used in other industries to make sewing machines and cut meat. In How Breakthroughs Happen, Andrew Hargadon explains that Ford was a "technology broker," and that the best companies innovate in the same way. Hargadon is Assistant Professor of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis. Based on 10 years of study into the origins of historic inventions and modern innovations -- from the lightbulb to the Reebok Pump athletic shoe -- Hargadon's work shows how "technology brokers" create an enduring capacity for breakthrough innovations. In this summary -- which is essential listening for anyone in business today -- you'll learn how you can use technology brokering to turn your own company into an innovation factory.

Creating the Innovation Culture: Leveraging Visionaries, Dissenters & Other Useful Troublemakers

Creating the Innovation Culture: Leveraging Visionaries, Dissenters & Other Useful Troublemakers Frances Horibe Most managers agree that innovation is the single most important driver of business success. Yet, many companies fail to harness creativity. Why? Because corporate cultures are often focused on efficiency -- on doing the same things faster and cheaper -- while innovation demands that...

Blindsided: How to Spot the Next Breakthrough That Will Change Your Business

Blindsided: How to Spot the Next Breakthrough That Will Change Your Business Jim Harris In this time of uncertainty, even the most successful companies are threatened, and every decision maker is looking for a trustworthy vision of the future. This is a perfect time to broaden and sharpen your perspective with Blindsided, by Jim Harris. Our summary will arm you with practical strategies, proven...

24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Change

24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Change Stephen M. Shapiro In every industry, the ability to innovate continuously is what gives leading companies their strength, their staying power, and their value. But you can't hold a few brainstorming meetings with a handful of key people once or twice a year. Instead, you must inject innovation throughout the execution...

The Leader’s Edge: 5 Skills of Breakthrough Thinking

The Leader's Edge: 5 Skills of Breakthrough Thinking Guy Hale For over 20 years, Hale has taught the five critical “Thinking Skills” to managers and professionals at some of the world’s largest and most respected firms.  — As successful executives and professionals, we all practice most of these skills, in some form, almost everyday.  However, few of us use them as effectively as we...

Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration Warren Bennis & P.W. Biederman By examining some of history‘s greatest groups--from the Manhattan Project to teams that invented the personal computer--Bennis and Biederman uncover the secrets of collective genius. They describe the free-form organization of Great Groups and the roles played by their leaders: gatherers of talent,...

Patterns of High Performance: Discovering the Ways People Work Best

Patterns of High Performance: Discovering the Ways People Work Best Jerry L. Fletcher The key to energized performance, heightened creativity, and consistent excellence lies in discovering your individual High Performance Pattern. This is the distinctive sequence of steps you naturally follow when you are at your best:  when you feel enthusiastic; when the work flows easily; and when the...

Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa More than any other factor, making the right decisions determines how happy and successful we are. However, few of us consistently make decisions the right way. In Smart Choices, three renowned experts show how to avoid decision making pitfalls and start making more rewarding dec

Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Corporate Creativity

Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Corporate Creativity John Kao Dr. Howard explains how recent breakthroughs in mid-brain research can be applied to make your organization more effective.  Improve the management decisions you make by putting the latest findings from mind-brain research to work for you.  Maximize your worker’s performance by appealing to their five senses:  sight, sound,...

The Owner’s Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research

The Owner's Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research Pierce J. Howard Dr. Howard explains how recent breakthroughs in mid-brain research can be applied to make your organization more effective.  Improve the management decisions you make by putting the latest findings from mind-brain research to work for you.  Maximize your worker’s performance by appealing to...

Wal-Smart: What It Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World

Wal-Smart: What It Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World William H. Marquard Like it or not, we now live in the Wal-Mart Economy. By providing a new level of convenience, low price, and efficiency, Wal-Mart has substantially changed the rules of the global economy, customer expectations for every business, and the ways that organizations must respond in order to survive. In Wal-Smart,...

Rethink: A Business Manifesto for Cutting Costs and Boosting Innovation

Rethink: A Business Manifesto for Cutting Costs and Boosting Innovation Ric Merrifield It's the trap that ensnares virtually every business. We focus on process: "how" we're doing the job. And we forget about the bigger issue: "what" we're doing and "why" we're doing it. That's why so many organizations are leaving so much value on the table. In our summary of Rethink: A Business...

Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate

Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate Michael Schrage Virtually every significant marketplace innovation in this century, from the airplane to the animated motion picture to the Internet, is a direct result of extensive prototyping and simulation. Wherever you look for the fundamental dynamics driving innovation, you find innovators managing models. Our...

Reinventing the Business: Preparing Today’s Enterprise for Tomorrow’s Technology

Reinventing the Business: Preparing Today's Enterprise for Tomorrow's Technology Roy L. Harmon Technological change is creating winners and sweeping I away losers in every industry. Roy L. Harmon, author of Reinventing the Factory and founder of Andersen Consulting's Manufacturing Productivity Practice, draws on thousands of cases and hundreds of experts to paint a compelling vision of the...

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity Avinash Kaushik The Web, on-line marketing, and advertising have been revolutionized in the past few years, yet the approach to using data has remained largely the same as a decade ago. Our summary of Web Analytics 2.0, by Avinash Kaushik, will give you a framework that redefines what data means ...

Jumping the Curve: Innovation and Strategic Choice in an Age of Transition

Jumping the Curve makes a compelling case for why so many firms are faced with a choice between death and rebirth, and what you can do to ensure your firms long-term survival. Even if things look good today, there is a very real chance that there is trouble waiting around the corner. The author’s explain how you can jump your business from its present S-shaped growth cure, which may be nearing its peak, to a whole new one, ready to take-off. If you really care about the long-term vitality of your business this is an important book for you.

Break from the Pack: How to Compete in a Copycat Economy

Break from The Pack: How to Compete in a Copycat Economy Oren Harari In every industry, products are turning into commodities, services are being imitated by competitors, and traditional barriers to market entry are collapsing.  To sustain a competitive advantage in today’s Copycat Economy, you must break from the pack. Our summary of Break From the Pack, by Oren Harari, will ...

The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks

The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan The key to creating value and the future growth of every business depends on accessing a global network of resources to co-create unique experiences with customers, one at a time. To achieve this, companies must transform their business processes, technical systems, and supply...

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits C.K. Prahalad As consumers in the developed world become increasingly frugal in the aftermath of one of the deepest recessions in history, forward-thinking executives are expanding their focus to encompass a market that offers an enormous, yet mostly ignored,...

Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

Today, countless innovative business models are emerging. Entirely new industries are forming, while old ones are crumbling. Upstarts are challenging the old guard, some of whom are struggling feverishly to reinvent themselves. How do you imagine your organization’s business model might look two, five, or 10 years from now? Will you be among the dominant players? Will you facing competitors with formidable new business models? Our summary of Business Model Generation, by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, will give you deep insight into the nature of business models, and it will help you to lead the redesign of our own organization’s business model. Osterwalder is an author, speaker, and adviser on the topic of business model innovation. Pigneur has been a professor of management information systems at the University of Lausanne since 1984. Osterwalder and Pigneur’s practical approach to designing innovative business models is practiced in multiple industries throughout the world by companies including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, Telenor, and many others. This summary offers powerful, simple, tested tools for visionaries, game changers, and challengers who are striving to design or reinvent business models. It will help you to find innovative ways of doing business to replace old, outdated business models, so you can create tomorrow’s winning enterprises with confidence.

10 Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution

10 Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble Even the best companies – the ones with powerful products and proven business models -- eventually stop growing. That’s why the leaders of these companies find emerging high-growth industries so attractive. Although they lack a proven formula for making a profit, these industries offer...

The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

The story of the '90s: a market-leading firm loses its market to newer firms with newer technologies and better business models. In The Innovator‘s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen explains why this happens and what your company can do to take control of the situation. This summary should serve as both an urgent warning, and as a signal of opportunity. If your company is currently the industry leader, you need to pursue the strategies we‘ll discuss to avoid missing the next wave of innovation. If your firm is not on top, this is your chance to get there.

Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life

Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life Gary Hamel Hamel authored Competing for the Future, and today is arguably “the most influential thinker on strategy in the Western world.” He contends that new business revolutionaries are infiltrating every industry, blowing up old business models and creating new wealth everywhere. Incumbents...

Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios

Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios Liam Fahey & Robert Randall When companies cannot imagine the future, they are often blind-sided by what develops: competitors they didn't anticipate suddenly emerge, technologies in which they invested heavily become obsolete, customer demands take an unforeseen turn. In many cases, these crises could have been turned into...

All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Breakthrough Strategy

All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Breakthrough Strategy Constantinos C. Markides This summary explains precisely and concisely what a strategy is, how to formulate one, and how to develop unique new strategies to meet the future. Markides is Chairman of the Strategy Department at the London Business School, and he publishes frequently in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management...