"Documenting the interconnectedness among the crucial milestones of our time, and illustrated with full-color photography, a comprehensive tour of modern science and technology explores the most important innovations and inventions in engineering, physics, medicine, chemistry, biology and more."--Publisher's description.

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy, but are willing to pay premium prices for. How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights. After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs to Be Done" approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones. Christensen contends that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts. This book carefully lays down Christensen’s provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world—and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

Discover the MIT-developed, “doer’s approach” to innovation with this guide that reveals you don’t need an earth-shattering idea to create a standout product, service, or business—just a hunch that you can scale up to impact. Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there’s very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach—a doer’s approach developed over a decade at MIT and internationally in workshops, classes, and companies. He shows that innovating doesn’t require an earth-shattering idea; all it takes is a hunch. Anyone can do it. By prototyping a problem and learning by being wrong, innovating can be scaled up to make an impact. As Perez-Breva demonstrates, “nothing is new” at the outset of what we only later celebrate as innovation. In Innovating, the process—illustrated by unique and dynamic artwork—is shown to be empirical, experimental, nonlinear, and incremental. You give your hunch the structure of a problem. Anything can be a part. Your innovating accrues other people’s knowledge and skills. Perez-Breva describes how to create a kit for innovating, and outlines questions that will help you think in new ways. Finally, he shows how to systematize what you’ve learned: to advocate, communicate, scale up, manage innovating continuously, and document—“you need a notebook to converse with yourself,” he advises. Everyone interested in innovating also needs to read this book.

A compilation of 3M voices, memories, facts and experiences from the company's first 100 years.

The engineering ideas behind key twentieth-century technical innovations, from great dams and highways to the jet engine, the transistor, the microchip, and the computer. Technology is essential to modern life, yet few of us are technology-literate enough to know much about the engineering that underpins it. In this book, David P. Billington, Jr., offers accessible accounts of the key twentieth-century engineering innovations that brought us into the twenty-first century. Billington examines a series of engineering advances--from Hoover Dam and jet engines to the transistor, the microchip, the computer, and the internet--and explains how they came about and how they work.

What is an innovation ecosystem? It is a blueprint for the city of the future. An environment that not only supports innovation, but makes it inevitable. Over the last twenty years, Chicago has seen a revolutionary change in business culture and success, largely in part to the formation of an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship. The city has become a top-ten global innovation hub, and leads the country in diversity of industry and foreign direct investment. Rising Together shares the story of the people, organizations, and culture that led to this regional growth, as told through the lens of those who lived it. Combining insights from over thirty industry leaders and founders playing outsized roles in its development, the authors weave together a narrative of the formation, growth, and potential future of the Chicago innovation ecosystem. This book is a must read for anyone in search of ways to build or grow a community fueled by collaboration, growth, and innovation. Learn first-hand:---Which shared values can inspire an entire city to innovate: The C.H.I.C.A.G.O. Way---How collaboration across-industry and sector breeds innovation---Why individuals play a critical role in leading and inspiring a region-wide movement

The Verizon leadership team stands apart from most leadership teams today in their willingness repeatedly to put the enterprise before the individual. At first blush, this might look like a hopelessly old-fashioned notion in the age of the selfie. Yet, I would argue this is a trait that future leaders and boards of directors across industries would do well to understand and embrace. Seidenberg not once but twice in the service of company shareholders and employees subordinated himself and put off taking sole leadership of the company to advance the enterprise’s odds of success. And many others in this story exhibited the same trait to help build this industry-leading enterprise. They understood that the risk of not acting and thereby destroying value during a period of accelerating technological change and industry consolidation—a situation faced by leadership teams around the world today—was much greater than the risk of stepping in as No. 2 or co-CEO. In my 50 years of experience, it is a rare leadership team that will subordinate itself for the benefit of the industry, customers and the company. That principle, that the company comes first, the individual second, is what will define successful leadership teams of the future. Multiple leadership principles, some new, some timeless, emerge from this narrative and will be of great use to the next generation of leaders across industries and around the world. By taking a look at a company that successfully executed exponential transformation, we can take the strategies of Verizon leaders and apply them to our own experiences.—Ram Charan

In publications such as BusinessWeek and Fast Company, the media have celebrated Whirlpool's transformation into a leading-edge innovator and Nancy Tennant Snyder's role as chief innovation officer. Ten years after this remarkable transformation, Unleashing Innovation tells the inside story of one of the most successful innovation turnarounds in American history. Nancy Tennant Snyder and coauthor Deborah L. Duarte reveal how Whirlpool undertook one of the largest change efforts in corporate history and show how innovation was embedded throughout the company, which ultimately lead to bottom-line results.

Named one of 100 Leadership & Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon Editors An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen’s work continues to underpin today’s most innovative leaders and organizations. The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller—one of the most influential business books of all time—innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership. Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Sharp, cogent, and provocative—and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time—The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.

Innovation isn't something you do after you get your work done. It's how you do your work. Organizations all over the world are shedding jobs in record numbers. Yet today, they are desperately in need of people with the abilities and skills to think ahead of the curve, delight customers, motivate colleagues, slash costs, and achieve unconventional results. In this practical road map to becoming irreplaceable, global innovation guru and bestselling author Robert B. Tucker reveals why honing your I-Skills (Innovation Skills) may be the smartest career move you'll make. Based on interviews with forty-three innovation-adept managers and individual contributors, Innovation Is Everybody's Business guides you in: Mastering the seven essential I-Skills you need to become indispensable Unleashing the “mindset, skillset, and toolset of the innovator” that enable you to anticipate and rise to the challenges your organization faces in a hypercompetitive era Developing your Personal Innovation Strategy to address the critical components of becoming irreplaceable Assaulting your assumptions at the personal, organizational, and industry levels Building tools for work-life balance and creating your own job satisfaction If you're ready to stop talking about innovation and start adding value today – in your job, department or organization – you're ready to read and benefit from the powerful message of Innovation is Everybody's Business.