Download or read book The Innovation Paradox written by Xavier Cirera and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Schumpeter, economists have argued that vast productivity gains can be achieved by investing in innovation and technological catch-up. Yet, as this volume documents, developing country firms and governments invest little to realize this potential, which dwarfs international aid flows. Using new data and original analytics, the authors uncover the key to this innovation paradox in the lack of complementary physical and human capital factors, particularly firm managerial capabilities, that are needed to reap the returns to innovation investments. Hence, countries need to rebalance policy away from R and D-centered initiatives †“ which are likely to fail in the absence of sophisticated private sector partners †“ toward building firm capabilities, and embrace an expanded concept of the National Innovation System that incorporates a broader range of market and systemic failures. The authors offer guidance on how to navigate the resulting innovation policy dilemma: as the need to redress these additional failures increases with distance from the frontier, government capabilities to formulate and implement the policy mix become weaker. This book is the first volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.

Download or read book The Innovation Paradox written by Tony Davila and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling authors of Making Innovation Work (30,000 copies sold and translated into ten languages) comes a book that questions everything about how organizations innovate. Key takeaway: classical business management and corporate structures by their very nature will kill, not create, breakthroughs. The authors describe a new kind of organization--the startup corporation--that will make established companies as innovative as startups.

Download or read book Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins written by Richard Farson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-03-11 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Success in today's business economy demands nonstop innovation. But fancy buzzwords, facile lip service, and simplistic formulas are not the answer. Only an entirely new mindset -- a new attitude toward success and failure -- can transform managers' thinking, according to Richard Farson, author of the bestseller Management of the Absurd, and Ralph Keyes, author of the pathbreaking Chancing It: Why We Take Risks, in this provocative new work. According to Farson and Keyes, the key to this new attitude lies in taking risks. In a rapidly changing economy, managers will confront at least as much failure as success. Does that mean they'll have failed? Only by their grandfathers' definition of failure. Both success and failure are steps toward achievement, say the authors. After all, Coca-Cola's renaissance grew directly out of its New Coke debacle, and severe financial distress forced IBM to completely reinvent itself. Wise leaders accept their setbacks as necessary footsteps on the path toward success. They also know that the best way to fall behind in a shifting economy is to rely on what's worked in the past -- as when once-innovative companies like Xerox and Polaroid relied too heavily on formulas that had grown obsolete. By contrast, companies such as GE and 3M have remained vibrant by encouraging innovators, even when they suffered setbacks. In their stunning new book, Farson and Keyes call this enlightened approach "productive mistake-making." Rather than reward success and penalize failure, they propose that managers focus on what can be learned from both. Paradoxically, the authors argue, the less we chase success and flee from failure, the more likely we are to genuinely succeed. Best of all, they have written a little jewel of a book, packed with fresh insights, blessedly brief, and to the point.

Download or read book Brand New written by G. Michael Maddock and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-05-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brand New’s revolutionary innovation process is a proven road map you can put to work immediately to create successful new products, services, and business models. Written by leading innovation practitioners, and the coauthor of the bestseller Customers for Life, the authors of this tightly focused, highly entertaining book have nailed the issue perfectly when it comes to successfully introducing anything new. Research shows people like new products and services. Indeed they go out of their way to try to find them. Yet companies are truly terrible at providing new products and services that meet these customers’ needs. Why are companies so bad at giving customers what they want? Because they lack a simple proven process that makes sure innovation occurs efficiently time after time. No one knows this better than Mike Maddock and his team at Maddock Douglas, the Agency of Innovation,™ which has worked closely with more than a quarter of Fortune 100. To solve the innovation paradox, Maddock explains the process his team has used to help the world’s best companies and shows you how to Find needs and opportunity in the marketplace Come up with significant market insights Create compelling communication (using the actual words your customers use) to convince people to try your new creation What has worked for some of the world’s most successful companies, when it comes to innovation, will work for you. Start putting the lessons of Brand New to work for you…before the competition does.

Download or read book Resolving the Innovation Paradox written by G. Haour and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-11-17 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation is central to the success of technology companies. The CEOs of these companies must make a priority of ensuring that technical know how is effectively converted into value. The paradox is that they rarely do. Resolving the Innovation Paradox shows how to put innovation for longer-term growth at the centre of the CEO radar. One tool is distributed innovation . Distributed innovation offers companies two main benefits. First, companies raise revenue by using channels such as licensing and selling innovation projects. Second, companies tap into external technical know-how, combining it seamlessly with their internal capabilities to develop 'high impact' products and services. Unconstrained by internal resources, such firms gain in agility. Resolving the Innovation Paradox offers examples from companies such as Generics, Intel, Nokia and Samsung. The book is addressed to all readers interested in managing innovation.

Download or read book The Prosperity Paradox written by Clayton M. Christensen and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clayton M. Christensen, the author of such business classics as The Innovator’s Dilemma and the New York Times bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life, and co-authors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity, and offers a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change. Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Essentially, the plan is often to identify areas that need help, flood them with resources, and hope to see change over time. But hope is not an effective strategy. Clayton M. Christensen and his co-authors reveal a paradox at the heart of our approach to solving poverty. While noble, our current solutions are not producing consistent results, and in some cases, have exacerbated the problem. At least twenty countries that have received billions of dollars’ worth of aid are poorer now. Applying the rigorous and theory-driven analysis he is known for, Christensen suggests a better way. The right kind of innovation not only builds companies—but also builds countries. The Prosperity Paradox identifies the limits of common economic development models, which tend to be top-down efforts, and offers a new framework for economic growth based on entrepreneurship and market-creating innovation. Christensen, Ojomo, and Dillon use successful examples from America’s own economic development, including Ford, Eastman Kodak, and Singer Sewing Machines, and shows how similar models have worked in other regions such as Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Rwanda, India, Argentina, and Mexico. The ideas in this book will help companies desperate for real, long-term growth see actual, sustainable progress where they’ve failed before. But The Prosperity Paradox is more than a business book; it is a call to action for anyone who wants a fresh take for making the world a better and more prosperous place.

Download or read book The Little Black Book of Innovation written by Scott D. Anthony and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation may be the hottest discipline around today, in business circles and beyond. And for good reason. Innovation transforms companies and markets. It is the key to solving vexing social problems. And it makes or breaks professional careers. For all the enthusiasm the topic inspires, however, the practice of innovation remains stubbornly impenetrable. No longer. In this book the author draws on stories from his research and field work with companies like Procter & Gamble to demystify innovation. He presents a simple definition of innovation, breaks down the essential differences between types of innovation, and illuminates innovation's vital role in organizational success and personal growth. This unique hybrid of professional memoir and business guidebook also provides a powerful 28-day program for mastering innovation's key steps: (1) Finding insight, (2) Generating ideas, (3) Building businesses, and (4) Strengthening innovation prowess in workforces and organizations. Using several illustrative case studies and vignettes from a range of companies around the globe, this playbook teaches people how to turn themselves or their companies into true innovation powerhouses.

Download or read book The Proximity Paradox written by Kiirsten May and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’re too close to your business, and it’s killing your creativity Traditional business structures love stability and predictability. Yet many organizations believe the two essential ingredients for long-term success are creativity and innovation. Kiirsten May and Alex Varricchio, founders of the marketing agency UpHouse, call the relationship between these two opposing expectations the Proximity Paradox™ — the belief that those who are closest to a subject are best-qualified to innovate for it, when, in reality, intense proximity limits creativity. Instead, people need to create distance from challenges in order to see the best way forward. May and Varricchio believe that until we can separate innovation and execution within ourselves, we will only innovate to the level at which we can execute the idea. To be effective, we need to create distance between our innovation brain and our execution brain. Unpacking ten common Proximity Paradoxes that affect a company’s people, processes, and industry, the authors share some practical ideas to create the distance necessary for your next great idea. An especially valuable book for creatives, and non-creatives in creative industries, but equally applicable to all businesses that depend on innovation, The Proximity Paradox encourages us to ask hard questions about how we work, how our businesses are structured, and why we routinely find our creativity at odds with what’s asked of us as executors and stewards of the bottom line.

Download or read book The Efficiency Paradox written by Edward Tenner and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold challenge to our obsession with efficiency—and a new understanding of how to benefit from the powerful potential of serendipity. Algorithms, multitasking, the sharing economy, life hacks: our culture can't get enough of efficiency. One of the great promises of the Internet and big data revolutions is the idea that we can improve the processes and routines of our work and personal lives to get more done in less time than we ever have before. There is no doubt that we're performing at higher levels and moving at unprecedented speed, but what if we're headed in the wrong direction? Melding the long-term history of technology with the latest headlines and findings of computer science and social science, The Efficiency Paradox questions our ingrained assumptions about efficiency, persuasively showing how relying on the algorithms of digital platforms can in fact lead to wasted efforts, missed opportunities, and, above all, an inability to break out of established patterns. Edward Tenner offers a smarter way of thinking about efficiency, revealing what we and our institutions, when equipped with an astute combination of artificial intelligence and trained intuition, can learn from the random and unexpected.

Download or read book The Profit Paradox written by Jan Eeckhout and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the world In an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world’s working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility. A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.

Download or read book Collective Genius written by Linda A. Hill and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why can some organizations innovate time and again, while most cannot? You might think the key to innovation is attracting exceptional creative talent. Or making the right investments. Or breaking down organizational silos. All of these things may help—but there’s only one way to ensure sustained innovation: you need to lead it—and with a special kind of leadership. Collective Genius shows you how. Preeminent leadership scholar Linda Hill, along with former Pixar tech wizard Greg Brandeau, MIT researcher Emily Truelove, and Being the Boss coauthor Kent Lineback, found among leaders a widely shared, and mistaken, assumption: that a “good” leader in all other respects would also be an effective leader of innovation. The truth is, leading innovation takes a distinctive kind of leadership, one that unleashes and harnesses the “collective genius” of the people in the organization. Using vivid stories of individual leaders at companies like Volkswagen, Google, eBay, and Pfizer, as well as nonprofits and international government agencies, the authors show how successful leaders of innovation don’t create a vision and try to make innovation happen themselves. Rather, they create and sustain a culture where innovation is allowed to happen again and again—an environment where people are both willing and able to do the hard work that innovative problem solving requires. Collective Genius will not only inspire you; it will give you the concrete, practical guidance you need to build innovation into the fabric of your business.

Download or read book The Innovation Paradox written by Richard Farson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-07-02 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Innovation Paradox, Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes argue that failure has its upside, success its downside. Both are steps toward achievement, and the two extremes are not as distinct as we imagine. In today's business economy, it's not success or failure -- it's success and failure that lead to genuine innovation. History's great innovators, from Thomas Edison and Charles Kettering to Bill Gates and Jack Welch, saw failure as an important stepping-stone -- and with this groundbreaking book, you too can learn how to become more failure tolerant, more risk friendly, and therefore more innovative. Today's most prominent businesspeople agree that The Innovation Paradox has the formula for failure and success down to a science, Make no mistake: If you're looking to reinvent yourself, your ideas, or your business model, this book is your sure-fire way to start.

Download or read book The Power Paradox written by Dacher Keltner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revolutionary and timely reconsideration of everything we know about power. Celebrated UC Berkeley psychologist Dr. Dacher Keltner argues that compassion and selflessness enable us to have the most influence over others and the result is power as a force for good in the world. Power is ubiquitous—but totally misunderstood. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, Dr. Dacher Keltner presents the very idea of power in a whole new light, demonstrating not just how it is a force for good in the world, but how—via compassion and selflessness—it is attainable for each and every one of us. It is taken for granted that power corrupts. This is reinforced culturally by everything from Machiavelli to contemporary politics. But how do we get power? And how does it change our behavior? So often, in spite of our best intentions, we lose our hard-won power. Enduring power comes from empathy and giving. Above all, power is given to us by other people. This is what we all too often forget, and it is the crux of the power paradox: by misunderstanding the behaviors that helped us to gain power in the first place we set ourselves up to fall from power. We abuse and lose our power, at work, in our family life, with our friends, because we've never understood it correctly—until now. Power isn't the capacity to act in cruel and uncaring ways; it is the ability to do good for others, expressed in daily life, and in and of itself a good thing. Dr. Keltner lays out exactly—in twenty original "Power Principles"—how to retain power; why power can be a demonstrably good thing; when we are likely to abuse power; and the terrible consequences of letting those around us languish in powerlessness.

Download or read book CIO Paradox written by Martha Heller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-21 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regardless of industry, most major companies are becoming technology companies. The successful management of information has become so critical to a company's goals, that in many ways, now is the age of the CIO. Yet IT executives are besieged by a host of contradictions: bad technology can bring a company to its knees, but corporate boards rarely employ CIOs; CIOs must keep costs down at the very same time that they drive innovation. CIOs are focused on the future, while they are tethered by technology decisions made in the past. These contradictions form what Martha Heller calls The CIO Paradox, a set of conflicting forces that are deeply embedded in governance, staffing, executive expectations, and even corporate culture. Heller, who has spent more than 12 years working with the CIO community, offers guidance to CIOs on how to attack, reverse, or neutralize the paradoxical elements of the CIO role. Through interviews with a wide array of successful CIOs, The CIO Paradox helps readers level the playing field for IT success and get one step closer to bringing maximum value to their companies.

Download or read book Pirates In The Navy written by Tendayi Viki and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with the choice of starting a company or joining a large corporation, Steve Jobs believed that it was 'more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy'. But for innovators inside established companies, making a distinction between being a pirate and joining the navy is a fallacy. We have to figure out a way to become pirates in the navy! There is nothing harder in business than trying to innovate within large corporations. Innovators in big companies often face internal opposition as well as their external competitors. It is the management of the core business that tends to get in the way of innovation. Most intrapreneurs recognise that innovation can’t be carried out as a series of one-off projects that always have to jump through political hurdles. They realise that there is a need for innovation to happen as a repeatable process. But how can they achieve this? This is a step-by-step guide to getting continuous innovation done in companies and reshaping them in the process. It is for anyone involved in corporate innovation and driving company change.

Download or read book The Water Paradox written by Ed Barbier and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical new approach to tackling the growing threat of water scarcity Water is essential to life, yet humankind’s relationship with water is complex. For millennia, we have perceived it as abundant and easily accessible. But water shortages are fast becoming a persistent reality for all nations, rich and poor. With demand outstripping supply, a global water crisis is imminent. In this trenchant critique of current water policies and practices, Edward Barbier argues that our water crisis is as much a failure of water management as it is a result of scarcity. Outdated governance structures and institutions, combined with continual underpricing, have perpetuated the overuse and undervaluation of water and disincentivized much-needed technological innovation. As a result “water grabbing” is on the rise, and cooperation to resolve these disputes is increasingly fraught. Barbier draws on evidence from countries across the globe to show the scale of the problem, and outlines the policy and management solutions needed to avert this crisis.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox written by Wendy K. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of paradox dates back to ancient philosophy, yet only recently have scholars started to explore this idea in organizational phenomena. Two decades ago, a handful of provocative theorists urged researchers to take seriously the study of paradox, and thereby deepen our understanding of plurality, tensions, and contradictions in organizational life. Studies of organizational paradox have grown exponentially over the past two decades, canvassing varied phenomena, methods, and levels of analysis. These studies have explored such tensions as today and tomorrow, global integration and local distinctions, collaboration and competition, self and others, mission and markets. Yet even with both the depth and breadth of interest in organizational paradoxes, key issues around definitions and application remain. This handbook seeks to aid, engage, and fuel the expanding interest in organizational paradox. Contributions to this volume depict how paradox studies inform, and are informed, by other theoretical perspectives, while creating a resource that enables scholars to learn about and apply this lens across varied organizational phenomena. The increasing complexity, volatility, and ambiguity in our world continually surfaces paradoxical dynamics. Thus, this handbook offers insights to scholars across organizational theory.