Books we recommend
We recommend “Lean Innovation – A Fast Path from Knowledge to Value” because we wrote it. But we also like a lot of other books. Classics such as “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and “Blue Ocean Strategy” still work and do so very well. Titles such as “Theory U”, “The Ten Faces of Innovation” and “Sticky Wisdom” may also inspire you to innovate your innovation.
Lean Innovation
A Fast Path from Knowledge to Value
Within manufacturing, Lean has led to significant results throughout the world. But what happens when Lean meets innovation? Is the needed creativity destroyed, or can Lean make the results of the organisation even better?
Within manufacturing, Lean has led to significant results throughout the world. But what happens when Lean meets innovation? Is the needed creativity destroyed, or can Lean make the results of the organisation even better?
In Lean Innovation, Claus Sehested and Henrik Sonnenberg reveal how a managed iteration between creativity and effectiveness can ensure that the visions of top management are realised through the innovation processes. Lean can elevate the innovation processes to a new level where they become a true strategic differentiator. The authors address the key challenges facing leaders of knowledge organisations and present a number of principles which leaders can use to bring more leadership into the innovation work. They also discuss methods which can increase result focus and continuous learning in the core innovation processes.
The book contains specific and practical examples from five companies who started on a Lean Innovation journey. Innovation insights from Apple, Google, Toyota, IDEO and others are also included.
Business model generation
A great book on how visual methods from innovation can be used to make differentiated strategies.
Download a free version of the book here.
BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY
Companies have long engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share and struggled for differentiation.
Yet, in today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne contend that while most companies compete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasingly unlikely to create profitable growth in the future.
Blue Ocean Strategy provides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. In this frame-changing book, Kim and Mauborgne present a proven analytical framework and the tools for successfully creating and capturing blue oceans. Upending traditional thinking about strategy, Blue Ocean Strategy charts a bold new path to winning the future.
HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN – TOOLKIT BY IDEO
For years, organisations have used Human-Centered Design (HCD) to arrive at innovative business solutions. Funded by IDE as part of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and in collaboration with non-profit groups ICRW and Heifer International, IDEO has specially adapted this process for NGOs and social enterprises that work with impoverished communities around the world. The resulting HCD Toolkit helps organisations understand people’s needs in new ways, find innovative solutions to meet these needs and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.
THE INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA
This is a book about successful, well-led companies – often market leaders – who carefully pay attention to what customers need and who invest heavily in new technologies but still lose their market leadership suddenly. This can happen when disruptive technologies enter the stage. Most technologies improve the performance of existing products in relation to the criteria which existing customers have always used. These technologies are called sustaining technologies. Disruptive technologies do something different. They create an entirely new value proposition.
STICKY WISDOM
Sticky Wisdom should be required reading for anyone who's ever wondered how to have more fun at work and profit by it. The basic message is that creativity is like gold dust but it needs to be practised and worked at in organisations. It needs to become part of the organisational furniture. The book is easy to read – well laid out with lots of useful case studies and advice.
THE TEN FACES OF INNOVATION
With the aid of Jonathan Littman, Kelley works throughout this book to show how innovation can be much more painless than most people think and more fun. Kelley makes thinking collaboratively sound like a blast. In the process, he convinces you that your organisation should nurture and cherish playing with ideas. Although he admits that his consulting company, IDEO, found itself grinding along on tedious projects at times, and that he has watched people shoot down perfectly good suggestions, his underlying message is one of open possibility.
HOW TO BE AN EXPLORER OF THE WORLD
Artists and scientists analyse the world around them in surprisingly similar ways - by observing, collecting, documenting, analysing and comparing. In this captivating guided journal, readers are encouraged to explore their world as both artists and scientists. Smith sets the reader the mission of documenting and observing the world around them as if they've never seen it before - taking notes and collecting things they find on their travels.