New Business Book Summary Available for Make It New

In the early years, designers took a back seat to engineering at Silicon Valley, but as the great technology companies grew, the scope and importance of design strategy grew with it. In fact, whole new fields of design have emerged to keep pace with the growing challenges of rapidly improving technology. Make It New by Barry M. Katz presents the history of Silicon Valley with an educated eye on the interaction between engineering and design that he believes is responsible for its success. Additionally, Katz shows why design thinking will be at the forefront of future creativity as Silicon Valley strives to improve the quality of life throughout the globe.

New Business Book Summary Available for Masters of Innovation

At the heart of every innovative company is the ability of leaders to communicate a vision, create an environment where creativity can flourish, and implement innovative processes that can be repeated again and again. In Masters of Innovation, Kai Engel, Violetka Dirlea, Stephen Dyer, and Jochen Graff provide a manual that teaches corporations how to bring innovative products and ideas to the marketplace and maximize profits.

New Business Book Summary Available for The Evolution of Everything

Evolution is a concept that is associated most commonly with the natural world. However, in The Evolution of Everything, Matt Ridley argues that evolution happens in every aspect of human culture. In domains as diverse as morality, technology, money, and religion, there is evidence that the world is a self-organizing, self-changing place that cannot be controlled or commanded by mankind. Ridley purports that evolution occurs not from top-down design but from bottom-up emergence.

New Business Book Summary Available for Future Smart

In Future Smart, author and futurist James Canton provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the technological, social, and environmental trends that are shaping the future. With knowledge of the future, Canton argues, entrepreneurs can start producing forward-thinking, actionable ideas that will ensure the success of their organizations. A guidebook to the business risks and opportunities of the future, Future Smart illustrates the importance of designing game-changing innovations, plans, and strategies today to ensure a successful tomorrow.

New Business Book Summary Available for The Creator’s Code

Creators, extraordinary entrepreneurs who have built hugely profitable businesses, share some common traits and practices. Amy Wilkinson has codified these into six essential skills she calls the creator’s code. She identified a select group of creators who have massively scaled their businesses to at least $100 million in annual revenue, then conducted qualitative studies of these entrepreneurs to identify the skills and traits that set them apart. In The Creator’s Code, Wilkinson posits that extraordinary entrepreneurs share an ability to identify unmet needs, to keep focused on the long term, to make fast decisions, and to learn from failure. They solve problems with diverse teams and are unflagging in their generosity. In short, the book provides the template for entrepreneurial success that the author’s research subjects never had.

New Business Book Summary Available for The First Mile

The first mile of innovation -- where an innovation moves from an idea on paper to the market -- is often plagued by failure. In fact, less than one percent of ideas launched by big companies end up having real impact. The ideas are not the problem. The process is. As Scott D. Anthony explains in The First Mile, the best way to gain an advantage at the outset of a new enterprise is through a process of trail-and-error experimentation called DEFT: Document, Evaluate, Focus, and Test. This approach enables leaders to navigate strategic uncertainty and minimize the challenges that most often derail innovation.

New Business Book Summary Available for The XYZ Factor

The XYZ factor is a philosophy and a set of business practices rooted in principles of the Millennial generation. It creates an office culture that encourages innovation, transparency, democracy, and creativity. In The XYZ Factor, editors Nancy Lublin and Alyssa Ruderman and numerous contributors share how their work at the decidedly XYZ organization DoSomething.org can serve as a blueprint for organizations striving to stand out from the crowd, increase engagement, and improve productivity.

New Business Book Summary Available for Make Waves

Today’s business world calls for movement, innovation, and dynamic ideas and plans. In Make Waves, Patti Johnson provides a complete and impactful assessment of making a difference and affecting change in a wide variety of corporate structures. She believes that CEOs, executives, and managers are looking for the next generation of “wave makers,” defined as employees, staff members, or fellow leaders who seek to change conventional business modalities. To achieve success and exceed demands, needs, and goals, companies must create new avenues of thought and action and adopt a mind-set that breaks from the traditional methods and practices inherent in the course of day-to-day business.

New Business Book Summary for Fail Better

It has become a truism in business today that failure is inevitable—and that effective leaders learn from the experience of failing. But without a roadmap, turning mistakes into positive, goal-driven insights and actions can be difficult. In Fail Better, management experts Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn offer a systems approach to evaluating what does and does not work for a team, and designing new practices that will maximize the team’s capacities, skills, and opportunities. Overall, their method ensures that every failure is maximally useful in the lessons it imparts as well as the changes it inspires.

New Business Book Summary Available for Bringing Strategy Back

Reverse innovation is the idea that many innovations originate in developing countries and trickle up to wealthier nations. In this fashion, the future of true growth and innovation will come from Asia, the Middle East, and the like. In Bringing Strategy Back, Jeffrey Sampler explores how companies in the East that are accustomed to chaos and turmoil are proactively responding to change. In order to succeed in today’s constantly shifting marketplace, companies in the West must learn from those in the East and ditch their traditional, reactive approaches to dealing with unexpected global turbulence.

The Other Side of Innovation

Companies fail to innovate when they put more energy and resources into generating “big ideas” than they do implementing them. In The Other Side of Innovation, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble demonstrate how the execution of an innovation initiative is just as important to the process as generating the idea itself. Drawn from their ten years of innovation research on the world’s most respected companies, the authors offer innovation leaders the framework to build teams and plans capable of facilitating the successful execution of any innovation initiative.

Social Machines

According to Peter Semmelhack, by 2020, at least 50 billion products will be sharing information over the Internet. In Social Machines, he argues that the traditional business model of creating a product that does not use digital technology is obsolete, and companies that cling to this business model are doomed to fail. He explains the significance and benefits of designing and building social machines and presents several examples of companies that have already made the leap to integrating technology to improve the social presence of their products. He also provides practical advice for understanding the design requirements for building social machines and implementing digital technology in almost any industry.