Recommended Readings / Texts on Innovation
Bagchi, Subroto, "The High-Performance Entrepreneur", Penguin Books India, 2006.
Christensen, Clayton M. and Michael E. Raynor, The Innovator's Solution, Harvard Business School Press, 2003
Analyzes the strategies that allow corporations to successfully grow new businesses and outpace the other players in the marketplace. Christensen's earlier book examined how focusing on profits can destroy even well-run corporations. This book focuses on companies expanding by being "disruptors" who are able to outpace their entrenched competition.
Christensen, Clayton M., The Innovator's Dilemma, Harper Business; 2003
Even the best-managed companies, in spite of their attention to customers and continual investment in new technology, are susceptible to failure, no matter what the industry.
Conner, Marcia: Learning to Learn
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Creativity - Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Perennial.
Dacey and Lennon, Understanding Creativity - The Interplay of Biological, Psychological, and Social Factors
De Bono, Edward, Serious Creativity
DeBono, Edward: Seven Hats of Creativity
DeGraff and Lawrence: Creativity at Work
Drucker, Peter F., Innovation and Entrepreneurship, HarperBusiness, 1993
Drucker's recurring theme is that good entrepreneurship is usually market-focused and market-driven. He gives us guidelines for identifying innovative opportunity. For example, unexpected successes or unexpected failures within an industry often point to opportunity. Drucker also suggests that innovative opportunity exists where there is "an internal incongruity within the rhythm or the logic of a process" or a process need.
Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation, The MIT Press, 2005
Argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes to systematically seek out innovations developed by users. Hippel points to businesses -- the custom semiconductor industry for example -- that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products.
Gelb, How to think like Leonardo DaVinci, Discovering Your Genius
Henry, Jane, Creative Management
Kelley, Tom, with Jonathon Littman, The Art of Innovation, Doubleday, 2001
Teaches indirectly by telling great stories--mainly, of how the best ideas for creating or improving products or processes come not from laboriously organized focus groups, but from keen observations of how regular people work and play on a daily basis.
Khandwalla, Pradeep, Corporate Creativity and Lifelong Creativity
Lundquist, Gary, "Innovation and Wealth Creation", The Market Engineering Press, 2003 (877-841-1411)
A white paper developed for The Colorado Innovation Summit that looks at innovation from perspectives of value, definition, invention, vision, brand, strategy, value webs, agents of change, wealth, systems, partnerships, portfolios, and the future.
Lundquist, Gary, The Innovators' Edge, The Market Engineering Press, 2003 (877-841-1411)
A compilation of editions of The Colorado Innovation Newsletter with white papers and descriptions of innovation toolkits.
MacKenzie, Gordon, Orbiting the Giant Hairball
Mau, Bruce, Massive Change
Michalko, M. (2001). Cracking creativity: The secrets of creative genius. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention", New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Nugent, John, Plan to Win: Analytical and Operational Tools - Gaining Competitive Advantage
Peters, Tom, The Circle of Innovation, Vintage Books, 1997
A vision for prospering in the "permanent state of flux" ruling today's business world. Peters simply but passionately offers his prescription--perpetual innovation--in a nontraditional manner intended to foster individual interpretation.
Puccio, G., Murdock, M., & Mance, M. (2007). Creative leadership: Skills that drive change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sternberg, R. (Ed.) (1998). Handbook of creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sternberg, Robert J., Editor, The Handbook of Creativity,
Thompson, Chic: What a Great Idea
von Oech, Roger, A Whack on the Side of the Head, yes, and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants