Book Summaries

Costovation solves the dilemma of how to spend less and innovate more. The book's revolutionary approach broadens the definition of innovation beyond products to the business model itself.

Innovation strategy and growth expert Clayton M. Christensen, and his co-authors Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David Duncan, present a new conceptual framework for products and innovation based on their conclusion that customers don't "buy" products or services; they “hire” them to do a job.

Technology innovator Jay Samit describes the unique method he has used to invent new markets and expand established businesses. He demystifies the mechanics of disruption for individuals and businesses alike while offering empowering advice for anyone with a big idea.

Rowan Gibson presents an innovation methodology for systematically stretching your thinking, discovering inspiring new insights and producing a portfolio of high-quality ideas and radically new growth opportunities. You will learn how to reverse-engineer creative genius and make radical business innovation an everyday reality using four key business perspectives.

Dan Ward introduces the FIRE method in which strategies are built for speed and designs are streamlined, all at less cost. You’ll learn that the project leaders who embrace speed, thrift, simplicity and restraint tend to deliver affordable equipment that is available when it’s needed and effective when it’s used.

Bestselling author Peter Sims explores the value of taking small, experimental steps in developing breakthrough innovation. These little bets help determine direction while providing critical information from lots of little failures and from small significant wins. Sims shares examples of successful breakthrough innovators at work and the dramatic results of their efforts.

Overfished Ocean Strategy offers five principles to help businesses to find new opportunities in what were once considered useless by-products, discover resource-conserving efficiencies up and down their value chain, transfer their expertise from physical products to services, and develop ways to rapidly try out and refine these new business models.

In Best Practices Are Stupid, Stephen M. Shapiro offers 40 counterintuitive yet proven strategies for boosting innovation and making it a repeatable, sustainable and profitable process at the heart of a company's culture. Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the competition.

Creative Intelligence illustrates how to connect our creative output with a new type of economic system, Indie Capitalism.