2021 Axiom Business Book Award Winner in Business Intelligence/Innovation Innovation isn't optional--it's imperative Everyone wants to create new products and services, find new customers and markets, stay ahead of the competition, and work smarter instead of harder. Yet with all the focus and attention on innovation, the term has become an overused buzzword rather than a real, tangible concept. If you want to seriously pursue innovation--you need to strip away the hype. Real innovators need to transcend the existing ideas, rules, and patterns to discover exciting new outcomes. They must step outside the best practice box and get their hands dirty. The spirit of a true innovator is rooted in wanting to do something that has never been done before, to solve problems that have never been solved, and to run through walls and leap over tall buildings to get there. In The Innovator's Spirit, author Chuck Swoboda--retired chairman and CEO of Cree, a company that fundamentally changed the way people experience light and drove the obsolescence of the Edison light bulb--explains that innovation is fundamentally about people and shows his readers how to develop a mindset of creativity, risk-taking, and hard work. He also instills in them a belief that there is always a better way.

2021 Axiom Business Book Award Winner in Business Intelligence/Innovation Innovation isn't optional—it's imperative Everyone wants to create new products and services, find new customers and markets, stay ahead of the competition, and work smarter instead of harder. Yet with all the focus and attention on innovation, the term has become an overused buzzword rather than a real, tangible concept. If you want to seriously pursue innovation—you need to strip away the hype. Real innovators need to transcend the existing ideas, rules, and patterns to discover exciting new outcomes. They must step outside the best practice box and get their hands dirty. The spirit of a true innovator is rooted in wanting to do something that has never been done before, to solve problems that have never been solved, and to run through walls and leap over tall buildings to get there. In The Innovator’s Spirit, author Chuck Swoboda—retired chairman and CEO of Cree, a company that fundamentally changed the way people experience light and drove the obsolescence of the Edison light bulb—explains that innovation is fundamentally about people and shows his readers how to develop a mindset of creativity, risk-taking, and hard work. He also instills in them a belief that there is always a better way.

Reveals the importance of innovation in American global competitiveness, profiling some of today's most compelling young innovators while explaining how they have succeeded through the unconventional methods of parents, teachers, and mentors.

Fascinating profiles of the most important spiritual leaders of the past one hundred years. An invaluable reference of twentieth-century religion and an inspiring resource for spiritual challenge today. The result of a nationwide survey of experts in leading universities and seminaries, as well as leading representatives of dozens of religious traditions and spiritual persuasions, this authoritative list of seventy-five includes martyrs and mystics, intellectuals and charismatics from East and West. Their lives and wisdom are now easily accessible in this inspiring volume. A celebration of the human spirit, ideal for both seekers and believers, the curious and the passionate, thinkers and doers, Spiritual Innovators is an authoritative guide to the most creative spiritual ideas and actions of the past century--a challenge for us today. An empowering guide to the most creative spiritual ideas of the past century, and a challenge for today, Spiritual Innovators profiles seventy-five remarkable people together in one accessible volume. Each profile includes: * Synopsis of innovator’s life and the evolution of their spiritual leadership and influence. * Inspiring quotes--words of wisdom indicative of the innovator’s life and teachings. * A guide to further examination of their works, ideas, organizations, movements, legacy. * Resources for more in-depth study. Spiritual innovators covered: Chögyam Trungpa Mary Daly Mary Baker Eddy Robert Funk G. I. Gurdjieff Aimee Semple McPherson Elijah Muhammad Bhaktivedanta Prabuphada Bertrand Russell Zalman Schachter-Shalomi William J. Seymour Shirdi Sai Baba Starhawk Desmond Tutu Abdu’l Bahá Daniel Berrigan Dietrich Bonhoeffer Abraham Isaac Kook C. S. Lewis Huston Smith D. T. Suzuki Simone Weil Dorothy Day Catherine de Hueck Doherty Maha Ghosananda Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas Mother Teresa Walter Rauschenbusch Albert Schweitzer Robert Holbrook Smith Thich Nhat Hanh Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Black Elk Deepak Chopra Bede Griffiths Hazrat Inayat Khan J. Krishnamurti Meher Baba Seyyed Hossein Nasr Paramahansa Yogananda Andrew Weil Ajahn Chah Thomas Keating Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Thomas Merton Pema Chödrön Ramana Maharshi Seung Sahn Shunryu Suzuki --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail? In his masterly saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page. This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It's also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative. For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, The Innovators shows how they happen"--

Today's established companies must find new ways to reignite their entrepreneurial DNA and jumpstart revenues--or risk losing their way. By working with startup companies, Jim Stengel, renowned consultant to Fortune 500 companies and the former global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble, says that legacy companies can renew themselves: by acquiring new technology and creating new business lines; relearning the need for speed; sparking innovation; and learning from failures. At P&G, Stengel saw the importance of establishing partnerships with the startup world in order to learn how to better innovate. Relying on extensive interviews with innovation leaders at enterprise companies and startups, Stengel’s Unleashing the Innovators takes readers inside such storied companies as GE and Wells Fargo, IBM and Target, Motorola Solutions and Toyota to see what they are learning from their alliances with entrepreneurs. Stengel also explores how even 20- and 30-year-old "startups" like Amazon, Google, and Facebook can reinvent themselves--and what managers at legacy companies everywhere can learn from them. Drawing on a specially commissioned global study of over 200 established corporations and startups, conducted by research consultancy OgilvyRED, Stengel found that companies with successful startup partnerships are three times more likely to change their culture to be more innovative. Filled with indepth stories from the front lines of today’s most forward-looking companies, Unleashing the Innovators shows how companies of all sizes can better navigate today’s changing landscape, accelerate innovation, increase revenues, and improve their customer relationships.

From the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Farsighted Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, Emergence, Everything Bad is Good for You, Mind Wide Open and Ghost Map, and an acknowledged bestselling leader on the subject of innovation, gathers - for a foundational text on the subject of innovation - essays, interviews, and cutting-edge insights by such exciting field leaders as Peter Drucker, Richard Florida, Eric Von Hippel, Dean Keith Simonton, Arthur Koestler, John Seely Brown, and Marshall Berman. Johnson also provides new material from Marisa Mayer of Google, Twitter's Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, and Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's former Chief Software Architect. With additional commentary by Johnson himself, this book reveals the innovation found in a wide range of fields, including science, technology, energy, transportation, education, art, and sociology, making it vital, fresh, and fascinating reading for our time, and for the future.