This book presents unique insights and advice on defining and managing the innovation transformation journey. Using novel ideas, examples and best practices, it empowers management executives at all levels to drive cultural, technological and organizational changes toward innovation. Covering modern innovation techniques, tools, programs and strategies, it focuses on the role of the latest technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence to discover, handle and manage ideas), methodologies (including Agile Engineering and Rapid Prototyping) and combinations of these (like hackathons or gamification). At the same time, it highlights the importance of culture and provides suggestions on how to build it. In the era of AI and the unprecedented pace of technology evolution, companies need to become truly innovative in order to survive. The transformation toward an innovation-led company is difficult – it requires a strong leadership and culture, advanced technologies and well-designed programs. The book is based on the author’s long-term experience and novel ideas, and reflects two decades of startup, consulting and corporate leadership experience. It is intended for business, technology, and innovation leaders.

Out-innovate, outsmart and outmaneuver your competitors with tactics from the CEO of TrendHunter.com, Jeremy Gutsche. In our world of chaos and change, what are you overlooking? If you knew the answer, you’d be a better innovator, better manager, and better investor. This book will make you better by teaching you how to overcome neurological traps that block successful people, like you, from realizing your full potential. Then, it will make you faster by teaching you 6 patterns of opportunity: Convergence, Divergence, Cyclicality, Redirection, Reduction and Acceleration. Each pattern you’ll learn is a repeatable shortcut that has created fortunes for ex-criminals, reclusive billionaires, disruptive CEOs and ordinary people who unexpectedly made it big. In an unparalleled study of 250,000 ideas, Jeremy and his TrendHunter.com team have leveraged their 100,000,000 person audience to study what actually causes opportunity: data-driven research that was never before possible. The result is a series of frameworks battle-tested with several hundred brands, and top executives at some of the most successful companies in the world who rely on Jeremy to accelerate their hunt for ideas. Better and Faster will help you learn to see patterns and clues wherever you look that will put you on the smarter, easier path to finding those breakthrough ideas, faster.

"The time for rehashing America's lost battles on the world market has passed." "Now it's time to address a critical component of the economic battle plan: the product development process that creates the products that satisfy customer needs. How quickly these weapons of economic war are developed, how competitive they are, how timely they are deployed, and how supportable they are will determine the failure or success of American business in the 1990s." "Here is the right book at the right time...a concise blueprint to transform product development from a collection of ad hoc activities into an integrated, smoothly operating process. Written by the Director of Corporate Engineering for Hewlett-Packard, one of the most successfully innovative companies in America today, Accelerating Innovation shows how successful, well-tested concepts from the manufacturing domain can be readily transformed into the needy world of new product innovation." "Filled with clear-sighted analysis and practical explanations, this book will help management unleash innovation and creativity in development processes to meet the urgent need for bringing new technology to customers faster and more effectively than the competition." "Discover how to cope with the limited life span of today's products...anticipate changing consumer needs and desires...close the gap between new technology and products that apply it...bring leading-edge products to market fast...eliminate profit-threatening gaps between the "death" of obsolete products and the introduction of new ones...and enjoy higher returns on investment." "Accelerating Innovation provides a results-oriented model for transferring to product development the strategies that are moving manufacturers from the old era to the new one. Numerous real-life examples give you powerful insights into the time-based factoring and total quality management principles used so successfully in manufacturing and shows how to implement them in the product development cycle. Key chapters address how to shorten the innovation cycle time, applying the principle that success springs from focusing on the right issues; manage organization change so that change goes where you want it to go - and quickly, transfer quality principles used on the assembly line to the process of developing raw information and adding value to it, reduce innovation time by implementing the cost of quality principle (cost as a function of when an error is detected), manage information flow and bottlenecks, minimize changeover time; and much, much more." "Does your organization really have a handle on new product development? Are goals, objectives, processes, metrics, and controls in place? Are you equipped to create new products rationally and systematically, while continuously reducing innovation cycle times?" "Accelerating Innovation presents new thinking that will help you answer these questions with a resounding "yes." In product development, doing business the same old way is a formula for disaster. The time to act is long before the livelihood of the product development function is ever threatened. And if a company is trying to catch up, then it has to improve faster than its toughest competition if it ever expects to win." "Finally, here is a guide that can give you the critical advantage you need for success in product development - success that is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for survival."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

'FAST Creativity & Innovation' explores all the original concepts behind the FAST method with examples from all sorts of disciplines and industries, as well as looking at some of the newer derivatives of the method.

A new set of organizations has discovered a new formula: they combine customer-centricity with innovative power. These organizations have created a completely outside-in approach to the market. Not driven by what they're good at, they start with the market and design their strategy around it, replacing practices of the past with a new set of capabilities which enable them to be ahead of the curve in discovering new market opportunities. Whereas the traditional value chain model regards the market as the end-outcome of the efforts of the organization, the reversed value chain model starts there. The customer is the starting point and the value chain is the result of understanding customer needs and requirements. Customer Innovation presents this unique case for developing the outside-in organization to drive your business success, combining market orientation with innovation to enable actionable positive change in the way your company does business. Winner of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship category of the 2015 CMI Management Book of the Year Awards, Customer Innovation provides every business with the framework it needs to combine customer focus with innovation to achieve success. It is packed with real world examples from a range of leading global companies including Disney, Coca-Cola, LEGO, Eurex, Netflix, KLM, Carglass, Komatsu, Callebaut and more to help you put market awareness at the heart of your business.

In the first decade of the 21st century product development in networks was predicted to be of ever-increasing importance to businesses of all sizes because of changes in markets, in technology, in networks, and in the competences of Businesses. The growth in new products’ share of businesses’ total turnover and earnings were increasing at an unprecedented speed. The entrepreneurial innovations and technological improvements had resulted in the increasingly fast development of new products and services. Businesses and industries in different countries became increasingly more linked and interdependent in networks with respect to materials, business operations and particularly product development to match the wants and needs of the global market environment to high speed product development. Businesses were therefore encountering increasingly dynamic market fragmentation, shrinking time in market, increasing product variety, demands of production to customer specifications, reduced product lifetimes, and globalization of production.Networks were vital because the competition is not business against business, but network against network. Networks are vital because an increasing part of product development was carried out in all types of networks containing physical, ICT, dynamic, and virtual networks. Speed and pressure on time in product development seemed to continue to increase because customer demands for new products seemed to continue to increase. However, a Business seldom possessed all needed competences, and managers saw product development based on networks as an important solution to meet the strong competition of the future global markets and the strong demand for innovation and innovativeness. The evolution of market demands and focus (required) on competencies of businesses could be characterized as a development from a focus on efficiency, to a focus on quality and flexibility, to a focus on speed and innovativeness.This was why it was interesting and important to research and discuss product development and especially to understand high speed product development of individualized products in fragile market segments. Consequently, findings and learning on aspects like enablers, management tools, technological tools, product development models, product development processes and network tools to speed new product development are presented in this book.