Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want

• ISBN13: 9780307336699
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
Nothing is more important to business success than innovation . . . And here’s what you can do about it on Monday morning with the definitive how-to book from the world’s leading authority on innovation

When it comes to innovation, Curt Carlson and Bill Wilmot of SRI International know what they are talking about—literally. SRI has pioneered innovations that day in and day out are part of the fabric of your life, such as:

•The computer mouse and the personal computer interface you use at home and work

•The high-definition television in your living room

•The unusual numbers at the bottom of your checks that enable your bank to maintain your account balance correctly

•The speech-recognition system used by your financial services firm when you call for your account balance or to make a transaction.

Each of these innovations—and literally hundreds of others—created new value for customers. And that’s the central message of this book. Innovation is not about inventing clever gadgets or just “creativity.” It is the successful creation and delivery of a new or improved product or service that provides value for your customer and sustained profit for your organization. The first black-and-white television, for example, was just an interesting, cool invention until David Sarnoff created an innovation—a network—that delivered programming to an audience.

The genius of this book is that it provides the “how” of innovation. It makes innovation practical by getting two groups who are often disconnected—the managers who make decisions and the people on the front lines who create the innovations—onto the same page. Instead of smart people grousing about the executive suite not recognizing a good idea if they tripped over it and the folks on the top floor wondering whether the people doing the complaining have an understanding of market realities, Carlson and Wilmot’s five disciplines of innovation focus attention where it should be: on the creation of valuable new products and services that meet customer needs.

Innovation is not just for the “lone genius in the garage” but for you and everyone in your enterprise. Carlson and Wilmot provide a systematic way to make innovation practical, one intimately tied to the way things get done in your business.

Teamwork isn’t enough; Creativity isn’t enough; A new product idea isn’t enough

True innovation is about delivering value to customers. Innovation reveals the value-creating processes used by SRI International, the organization behind the computer mouse, robotic surgery, and the domain names .com, .org, and .gov. Curt Carlson and Bill Wilmot show you how to use these practical, tested processes to create great customer value for your organization.

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Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology

• ISBN13: 9781591024620
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
A revolution in the way we use artificial lighting is underway, one that is every bit as sweeping and significant as Edison’s invention of the light bulb. The technology of light emitting diodes (LEDs) is ready for widespread implementation. Its impacts will include a reduction in energy consumption for electric lighting by up to 80 percent.

Brilliant! tells the story of Shuji Nakamura, a gifted Japanese engineer who came out of nowhere to stun the world with his announcement that he had created the last piece in the puzzle needed for manufacturing solid-state white lights. The invention of this holy-grail product, which promises to make Edison’s light bulb obsolete, had eluded the best minds at the top electronic firms for twenty-five years. Until his startling announcement, Nakamura had not even been on the radar screen of most industry observers.

Veteran technology writer Bob Johnstone traces the career of Nakamura, which included many years of obstinate individual effort as well as a dramatic legal battle pitting him against his former Japanese employer. Over a five-year span, Nakamura distinguished himself with an unprecedented series of inventions—bright blue, green, ultraviolet, and then white LEDs, plus a blue laser that will play an essential role in the next-generation DVD players. Then he was forced to leave Nichia Chemical, the company where he had worked for twenty years, and his former employer sued him. The result was a multimillion-dollar settlement in a landmark decision that acknowledged, for the first time, the rights of individual inventors working in a corporate context. Today, Nakamura holds a professor’s chair at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he continues to develop the technology of LEDs.

Johnstone, the first Western journalist to meet and interview Nakamura, has received the brilliant engineer’s full cooperation through a series of exclusive interviews given for the book. Johnstone has also interviewed other key players in the imminent lighting revolution, providing an exciting preview of the technological, entrepreneurial, and artistic creativity that will soon be unleashed by Nakamura’s inventions.

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Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas

• ISBN13: 9780201741575
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

“All that have ever tried to impose change in their organization will immediately recognize and truly value the in-depth knowledge and experience captured in this book. It contains a collection of eye-openers that is a treasure chest for pioneers of new organizational ideas, A fantastic toolbox for use in future missions!”
—Lise B. Hvatum, product development manager, Schlumberger

“If you have need of changing your organization, and especially of introducing new techniques, then you want to understand what is in this book. It will help you avoid common pitfalls that doom many such projects and will show you a clear path to success. The techniques are derived from the experience of many individuals and organizations. Many are also fun to apply. This stuff is really cool—and really hot.”
—Joseph Bergin, professor of computer science, Pace University, New York

“If change is the only guarantee in life, why is it so hard to do? As this book points out, people are not so much resistant to change itself as they are to being changed. Mary Lynn and Linda have successfully used the pattern form to capture and present the recurring lessons of successful change efforts and have placed a powerful knowledge resource in the hands of their readers.”
—Alan O’Callaghan, researcher, Software Technology Research Laboratory, De Montfort University, United Kingdom

“The most difficult part of absorbing patterns, or any technology, into an organization is overcoming the people issues. The patterns in this book are the documentation of having gone through that experience, giving those that dare push the envelope a head start at success.”—David E. DeLano, IBM Pervasive Computing

“If you have ever wondered how you could possibly foster any cultural changes in your organization, in this book you will find a lot of concrete advice for doing so. I recommend that everyone read this book who has a vast interest in keeping his or her organization flexible and open for cultural change.”
—Jutta Eckstein, Independent Consultant, Objects In Action Author of Agile Software Development in the Large

48 Patterns for Driving and Sustaining Change in Your Organization

Change. It’s brutally tough to initiate, even harder to sustain. It takes too long. People resist it.

But without it, organizations lose their competitive edge. Fortunately, you can succeed at making change. In Fearless Change, Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising illuminate 48 proven techniques, or patterns, for implementing change in organizations or teams of all sizes, and show you exactly how to use them successfully.

Find out how to

• Understand the forces in your organization that drive and retard change
• Plant the seeds of change
• Drive participation and buy-in, from start to finish
• Choose an “official skeptic” to sharpen your thinking
• Make your changes appear less threatening
• Find the right timing and the best teaching moments
• Sustain your momentum
• Overcome adversity and celebrate success

Inspired by the “pattern languages” that are transforming fields from software to architecture, the authors illuminate patterns for every stage of the change process: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. These flexible patterns draw on the experiences of hundreds of leaders. They offer powerful insight into change-agent behavior, organizational culture, and the roles of every participant.

Best of all, they’re easy to use—and they work!

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Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change

• ISBN13: 9781591391852
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
A Framework for Predicting Industry Winners and Losers

Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data, and lead to costly errors in judgment.

Now, internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth present a groundbreaking framework for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry. Based on proven theories outlined in Christensen’s landmark books The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, Seeing What’s Next offers a practical, three-part model that helps decision-makers spot the signals of industry change, determine the outcome of competitive battles, and assess whether a firm’s actions will ensure or threaten future success. Through in-depth case studies of industries from aviation to health care, the authors illustrate the predictive power of innovation theory in action.

A unique, “outside-in” perspective on industry change, Seeing What’s Next will help executives, analysts, and investors develop invaluable intuition into the future that matters to them.

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Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond To The Redesigned Human Of The Future

• ISBN13: 9780813341989
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
In the next fifty years, life spans will extend well beyond a century. Our senses and cognition will be enhanced. We will have greater control over our emotions and memory. Our bodies and brains will be surrounded by and merged with computer power. The limits of the human body will be transcended as technologies such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering converge and accelerate. With them, we will redesign ourselves and our children into varieties of posthumanity.

This prospect is understandably terrifying to many. A loose coalition of groups-including religious conservatives, disability rights and environmental activists-has emerged to oppose the use of genetics to enhance human beings. And with the appointment of conservative philosopher Leon Kass, an opponent of in-vitro fertilization, stem cell research and life extension, to head the President’s Council on Bioethics, and with the recent high-profile writings by authors like Francis Fukuyama and Bill McKibben, this stance has become more visible-and more infamous-than ever before.

In the opposite corner a loose transhumanist coalition is mobilizing in defense of human enhancement, embracing the ideological diversity of their intellectual forebears in the democratic and humanist movements. Transhumanists argue that human beings should be guaranteed freedom to control their own bodies and brains, and to use technology to transcend human limitations.

Identifying the groups, thinkers and arguments in each corner of this debate, bioethicist and futurist James Hughes argues for a third way, which he calls democratic transhumanism. This approach argues that we will achieve the best possible posthuman future when we ensure technologies are safe, make them available to everyone, and respect the right of individuals to control their own bodies.

Hughes offers fresh and controversial answers for many other pressing biopolitical issues-including cloning, genetic patents, human genetic engineering, sex selection, drugs, and assisted suicide-and concludes with a concrete political agenda for pro-technology progressives, including expanding and deepening human rights, reforming genetic patent laws, and providing everyone with healthcare and a basic guaranteed income.

A groundbreaking work of social commentary, Citizen Cyborg illuminates the technologies that are pushing the boundaries of humanness-and the debate that may determine the future of the human race itself.

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