Using Innovation for Business Advantage
UNC Kenan-Flagler faculty recommend these books

"The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity From IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm"
by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman

IDEO is the brain trust behind some of the most brilliant innovations of the past 20 years - from the Apple mouse to the Polaroid i-Zone instant camera. Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley-based design firm, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit. Fortune magazine dubbed the company "Innovation U."

"The Creative Priority: Driving Innovation in the Real World"
by Jerry Hirshberg, founder and president, Nissan Design International (NDI)

A look at how to manage creative employees from one of America's most innovative designers and managers. Hirshberg delivers principles for building creative teams that have been tested in his many successful years at NDI.

"Radical Innovation: How Mature Companies Can Outsmart Upstarts"
by Richard Leifer, Christopher M. McDermott, Gina Colarelli O'Connor, Lois S. Peters, Mark P. Rice, Robert W. Veryzer and Mark Rice

The authors followed the development and commercialization activities of 12 radical innovation projects in 10 large companies over a five-year period. They define radical innovation as the development of new businesses or product lines - based on new ideas or technologies or substantial cost reductions - that transform the economics of a business.

"Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing and Sustaining Innovation"
by Robert I. Sutton

The author, a consultant and professor at Stanford Engineering School, advocates taking a nontraditional approach to innovation and management. He advises taking unorthodox actions - suggesting that managers should forget the past, especially their firm's successes, and that they should hire people who make them uncomfortable and who are slow learners about the accepted way of doing things in the firm.

"Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market - and How to Successfully Transform Them"
by Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan

Based on a concept first advanced some 70 years ago by economist Joseph Schumpeter, Foster and Kaplan (who are McKinsey & Company executives) propose that corporations can outperform capital markets and maintain their leadership positions only if they creatively and continuously reconstruct themselves. In doing so, they can stay ahead of the upstart challengers waiting in the wings.

"The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail"
by Clayton M. Christensen

What do the Honda Supercub, Intel's 8008 processor and hydraulic excavators have in common? They are all examples of disruptive technologies. The author shows how these and other products cut into the low end of the marketplace and eventually evolved to displace high-end competitors and their reigning technologies. In one of the most-talked-about business books, Christensen cautions that even the best-managed companies are susceptible to failure.

"Leading the Revolution:How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life"
by Gary Hamel

Corporate complacency and single-strategy business plans leave no room for what Hamel describes as the key to thriving in today's world of business: a deeply embedded capability for continual, radical innovation. Hamel urges far-reaching innovation: Imagine the kind of future you want for your company, and then go out and create it.

"Corporate Creativity: How Innovation and Improvement Actually Happen"
by Alan G. Robinson and Sam Stern (contributor)

The authors, who have served as advisers on creativity to organizations around the world, believe that the proper combination of originality and imagination is what really pumps life into a company. In the book, they cite numerous examples of creativity's place in celebrated corporate success stories, and they suggest various ways that other firms can harness this.

"What Were They Thinking?: Marketing Lessons I've Learned From Over 80,000 New-Product Innovations and Idiocies"
by Robert M. McMath and Thom Forbes

Thirty-year marketing industry veteran Robert McMath founded the New Products Showcase and Learning Center, in Ithaca, N.Y., which Business Week dubbed a "Smithsonian for Stinkers." There, executives from top corporations pay to rummage through 80,000 products gone awry. Their mission: to avoid the misguided, expensive mistakes that trip up even top companies.

"Managing Strategic Innovation and Change, a Collection of Readings"
Edited by Michael L. Tushman and Philip Anderson

The authors show the links among innovation, organizational architecture, executive teams and managing change. The 41 carefully chosen articles show how the diagnostic model is applied to the problem of managing innovation. Themes highlighted include the systems nature of technology, the importance of history and path dependence, the cross-functional nature of innovation management, the paradox between efficiency and adaptability and the role of executive leadership in managing through turbulence.