A practical guide to innovation which will give you the information and skills to succeed in businessBring innovation to your workplace, you'll find out how to use blue-sky thinking to promote creativity, enhance your business performance and get ahead of the competition.Tables, illustrations and 'In Focus' panels on what to do in a particular situation, plus real-life case studies demonstrate how to maximise the benefits of creative management for yourself, your s...

In a world moving towards services, driving service productivity is a central challenge for leaders and members of all types of organisations: for service businesses there is a clear need to be “productive”, but it is far less clear what this exactly means. In this book, we invite you on a journey that explores the ways, tools and options for driving service productivity. We take an innovator’s perspectives and look at the tricky challenge of service productivity as a landscape of options ...

Science and innovation have the power to transform our lives and the world we live in - for better or worse – in ways that often transcend borders and generations: from the innovation of complex financial products that played such an important role in the recent financial crisis to current proposals to intentionally engineer our Earth’s climate. The promise of science and innovation brings with it ethical dilemmas and impacts which are often uncertain and unpredictable: it is often only on...

This book is based on the findings, issues and questions related to an ongoing decade-old research project named the Innovation Lab (www.innovation-lab.org). The research project focuses on discontinuous innovation in more than thirteen countries, most of which are European, and provides useful insights into its different challenges. It also raises several questions related to the subject, some of which are: how do firms pick up weak signals on emerging — and possibly radically different —...

The ISO Innovation Management System (IMS) Standard (ISO 56002) provides a much needed and well-timed input to the innovation management discipline. While research efforts within the domain of innovation management have vastly increased over the past decades, research has primarily been conducted through specific contributions to distinct areas of innovation management (e.g., top management, culture, processes), lacking a more holistic perspective. Practitioners know that managing innovati...

Creativity for Innovation Management is a rigorous yet applied guide, which illustrates what creativity is, why it matters, and how it can be developed at both individual and group levels. Unlike many technique-oriented books, this book combines theory with practice, drawing on the latest research in psychology, organisational behaviour, innovation and entrepreneurship.The text provides a range of opportunities to explore innovative and creative processes and develop them ...

The concept of sustainability has grown in recognition and importance. The pressure on companies to broaden their reporting and accountability from economic performance for shareholders, to sustainability performance for all stakeholders is leading to a change of mindset in consumer behaviour and corporate policies. How can we develop prosperity without compromising the life and needs of future generations? Sustainability in Project Management explores and identifies the questions surround...

In today's world, only the smartest survive. The competitive landscape is littered with graves of well-known firms whose revenues, profits and stock prices rose for decades until they suddenly imploded.In fast-changing business environments, firms must adapt their strategies and innovate to remain at the top. But many successful firms fail to do so. Instead, they succumb to inertia, hesitate, or stick blindly to their old strategies, until it is too late.The ability to adap...

If the defining goal of modern-day business can be isolated to just one item, it would be the search for competitive advantage. And, as everyone in business knows, it's a lot harder than it used to be. On the one hand, competition is more intense than ever--technological innovation, consumer expectations, government deregulation, all combine to create more opportunities for new competitors to change the basic rules of the game. On the other hand, most of the old reliable sources of competi...

Linking various disciplines and management functions, Integrated Performance Management provides the reader with a concrete framework to manage organizations successfully. The authors do not isolate a single strategy to manage performance. Instead, the book focuses on a range of strategies providing the reader with an introduction to each one.The concepts under analysis were developed through intense dialogue with business managers. While maintaining academic rigou...

Breakthrough Problem Solving with Action Learning explores why and how action learning groups have been so successful and creative in solving complex problems. The text begins by briefly reviewing the theories that undergird the effectiveness of action learning, philosophically situating readers and pointing them in the direction of related academic works that they may wish to explore. It then turns to stories of how organizations have employed action learning in solving specific,...

Food and beverage companies are increasingly choosing to enhance internal idea development by pursuing an 'open innovation' approach, allowing the additional exploitation of external ideas and paths to market. Drawing on a range of important case studies, Open innovation in the food and beverage industry investigates the challenges and opportunities afforded by the incorporation of open innovation into the food industry.Part one provides a comprehensive overview of the changing nature of i...